Whither modern economics? Subjective semi-sociological observations

The paper summarizes main recent sociological, epistemological, methodological and ideological trends in modern economics and tries to evaluate its current state and further perspectives. Special attention has been paid to a change in economists' methodological ideal: economic science began with trying to become like physics but actually has become like medical statistics. The paper's general conclusion is that what we are witnessing today in modern economics is simply an ordinary working state rather than a triumph or a crisis. However, that state is not very promising since the period of new large theoretical ideas seems to be over for economics, the new atheoretical tendency in it is becoming stronger and in the very near future, economics is most likely to become more and more interventionist

Behavioral economics and the 'new' paternalism

The paper provides a critical appraisal of the normative program of behavioral economics known as 'new paternalism'. First, it explores the theoretical foundations of behavioral economics, describes major behavioral anomalies associated with bounded rationality of economic agents and discusses its normative principles and political implications. It then discusses the main empirical and conceptual drawbacks of new paternalism and provides arguments for the alternative non-welfarist normative tradition based on the idea of freedom

Labor Market Adjustment: Is Russia Different?

The paper discusses how the Russian labor market has been evolving over two decades of the transition. It starts with tracing key labor market indicators such as employment, unemployment, labor force participation, working hours, and real wages. Their dynamics indicate that the labor market tends to operate in a non-conventional fashion and far from the patterns expected initially. The authors argue that the current Russian labor market represents a peculiar model that is different from what is observed in the rest of Europe outside of the CIS. Having established this, they look at the institutional foundations that make this unconventional performance possible and proceed with discussing political economy and welfare implications. The findings are compared with the experience of other post-socialist countries.employment, unemployment, wages, labor market institutions, Russia

The phantom of technological unemployment

Nowadays there are many gloomy prophecies provided by both technologists and economists about the detrimental effects of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution on aggregate employment and its composition. These prophecies imply that in the near future we will face Robocalypse - a massive replacement of people by machines alongside an explosion in joblessness. This paper provides theoretical, empirical and historical evidence that the phenomenon of technological unemployment is a phantom. The most general results can be summarized as follows: in the long run, reduction in labor demand under the impact of new technologies is merely a theoretical possibility that has never before been realized in practice; at the level of individual firms, there is a strong positive relationship between innovations and employment growth; at the sectoral level, technological changes cause a multidirectional employment response, since different industries are at different stages of the life cycle; at the macro level, technological progress acts as a positive or neutral, but not a negative factor; a surge in technological unemployment, even in the short-term, seems a remote prospect since in coming decades the pace of technological change is unlikely to be fast enough by historical standards; the impact of new technologies on labor supply may be a more serious problem than their impact on labor demand; technological changes seem to have a much greater effect on the composition of employment than on its level

Stuck Between Surplus and Shortage: Demand for Skills in the Russian Industry

In order to remain competitive, firms need to keep the quantity and composition of jobs close to the optimal for their given output. Since the beginning of the transition period, Russian industrial firms have been widely reporting that the quantity and composition of hired labor is far from being close to optimal. This paper discusses what kinds of firms in the Russian manufacturing sector are not able to optimize their employment and why. Do they suffer from a labor shortage induced by rapid growth, or are they still struggling with employment overhang? What are the occupations and skills in which there is a supposed surplus or shortage? What factors affect the probability that a firm will report non-optimal employment and be unable to solve this difficulty? Where is the labor excess/shortage concentrated and what makes it persistent? Finally, we discuss the costs of non-optimal employment. The analysis presented in this article is based on the data from a large-scale survey of Russian manufacturing firms.labour shortage, skills, training, transition economies, Russia

Employment Protection Legislation in Russia: Regional Enforcement and Labour Market Outcomes

Since formal laws can be observed or ignored to varying degrees, the actual enforcement regime shapes incentives and constraints. Most of the studies exploring EPL effects on labour market performance implicitly assume that EPL compliance is near to complete and therefore all firms bear full adjustment costs incurred by the regulations. This seems to be a very strong assumption for any country but it sounds especially strong and hardly plausible for developing and transition economies. But if compliance and enforcement varies widely across regions/cities or segments of firms, then this variation is likely to cause variation in performance. This paper looks at Russia in particular. The main idea of this paper is to analize cross-regional and inter-temporal variation in EPL enforcement and to explore empirically whether it is translated into regional labour market outcomes. The paper employs unique data set based on the State Labour Inspectorate data and the Supreme Court statistics on labour disputes.employment protection regulations, enforcement, employment, unemployment, regional labor markets, Russia

Polarization or Upgrading? Evolution of Employment in Transitionary Russia

This paper discusses the structural change in the Russian employment and explores whether the evolution of employment over 2000-2012 followed the scenario of progressive upgrading in job quality or brought about the polarization of jobs in terms of their quality. Jobs are defined here as occupation-industry cells and their quality is measured through relative earnings and education levels. Using detailed micro-data from a few complementary large scale surveys, we rank all jobs according to the earnings and educational criteria and divide these distributions into 5 quintiles. At the next stage, we explore dynamic changes in job quality and socio-demographic characteristics of workers in different quintiles. The paper rejects the polarization scenario and confirms the upgrading hypothesis

Between Light and Shadow: Informality in the Russian Labour Market

Economic growth in Russia in the first decade of this century almost doubled the country's GDP but was accompanied by substantial reallocation of labor to the unregulated sector while formal employment was on gradual decline. The paper overviews evolution of the Russian labour market during the period of 2000-10 and discusses most general implications of informality to employment and earnings as well as the associated political economy challenges and consequences

Labor market adjustment: Is Russia different?

The paper discusses how the Russian labor market has been evolving over two decades of the transition. It starts with tracing key labor market indicators such as employment, unemployment, labor force participation, working hours, and real wages. Their dynamics indicate that the labor market tends to operate in a non-conventional fashion and far from the patterns expected initially. The authors argue that the current Russian labor market represents a peculiar model that is different from what is observed in the rest of Europe outside of the CIS. Having established this, they look at the institutional foundations that make this unconventional performance possible and proceed with discussing political economy and welfare implications. The findings are compared with the experience of other post-socialist countries

Polarization or upgrading? Evolution of employment in transitional Russia

This paper discusses the structural changes in Russian employment and explores whether the evolution of employment from 2000 to 2012 followed the scenario of progressive upgrading in job quality or brought about the polarization of jobs in terms of quality. Jobs are defined in this study as occupation-industry cells, and their quality is measured through relative earnings and education level. Using detailed micro-data from a few complementary large-scale surveys, we rank all jobs according to the earnings and educational criteria and divide these distributions into five quintiles. At the next stage, we explore dynamic changes in job quality and socio-demographic characteristics of workers in different quintiles. The paper rejects the polarization scenario and confirms the upgrading hypothesis