In this paper we explore politico-economic determinants of health. We draw upon the unique natural experiment of post-communist transitions to show the effect on health (measured as life expectancy and cause-specific mortality) of the interaction between institutions for political (democratic...

This paper investigates the determinants and consequences of manipulating coronavirus statistics in an authoritarian federation; in particular, we look at how the career concerns of local politicians and the regional free press determine the under-reporting of COVID-19 mortality at the...

Russian Abstract: Данная работа посвящена исследованию роли социального капитала в обеспечении модернизации российской экономики. В работе подчеркивается значение...

The paper deals with a problem regularly faced by survey studies of patriarchal communities, i.e. communities with a high authority of senior generations and a low level of women's autonomy. In such communities, female respondents might give untruthful answers to survey questions in order to fit...

The paper investigates the role of judiciary behavior in the development of SMEs in Russian regions. Specifically, it looks at how repressive Russian courts are in punishing economic crime. Repressiveness of courts can be both an obstacle of business development (if it serves the predatory...

The paper investigates the influence of outside options on the predatory behavior of autocrats. An outside option is referred to as the opportunity of an incumbent ruler to continue his career outside his current territory of control. The paper uses data on the effectiveness of tax collection...

The paper investigates the determinants and consequences of variation of development of the civil society across Russian regions. It starts by looking at factors explaining the level of development of civil society in Russian regions. In the next step, it links the development of civil society...