Contrasts in China and Soviet reform: sub-national and national causes

Why did reform in China and the former Soviet Union produce drastically different outcomes? Why did some provinces in China embrace faster economic reform than others? This article argues that the state sector and reform initiatives in the sub-national units, reform strategies, entrenchment and maturation of central planning, the size of the defence industry, policy choice and the historical context help explain the differences in Soviet and Chinese reform courses and outcomes. A predominant state sector in the former Soviet republics had stifled local reform initiatives. Gorbachev resorted to democratisation in order to unbolt the gate for popular support for marketisation, yet resulting in the breakup of the Soviet Union and destabilising the economy. In China, some provinces had sizable non-state sectors and were inclined to push forth marketization. Reform resulted in expanding non-state sectors, generating high growth and encouraging the regime to maintain its monopoly of power. China’s reform also benefited from a yet-to-be-entrenched and rudimentary central planning, a small defence sector, popular backlash against past policies, and reformist pragmatic strategy

Economic Games on the Internet: The Effect of $1 Stakes

Online labor markets such as Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) offer an unprecedented opportunity to run economic game experiments quickly and inexpensively. Using Mturk, we recruited 756 subjects and examined their behavior in four canonical economic games, with two payoff conditions each: a stakes condition, in which subjects' earnings were based on the outcome of the game (maximum earnings of $1); and a no-stakes condition, in which subjects' earnings are unaffected by the outcome of the game. Our results demonstrate that economic game experiments run on MTurk are comparable to those run in laboratory settings, even when using very low stakes

The Re-Emerging Role of the State in Contemporary Russia

I examine ownership structure of Russian firms during the 1998-2006 period, where a greater emphasis is placed on motivations behind increased government ownership in the latter years, when oligarchs' opportunistic influence on the firm diminished as state ownership correspondingly increased. As this phenomenon is also correlated with improved corporate growth during the period, I argue that state participation in corporate governance acted as an effective substitute mechanism to constrain wealth-tunnelling behaviour of corporate insiders and local bureaucrats in a country defined by a weak property rights system. © 2012 Springer-Verlag

The H4K20 demethylase DPY-21 regulates the dynamics of condensin DC binding

Condensin is a multi-subunit SMC complex that binds to and compacts chromosomes. Unlike cohesin, in vivo regulators of condensin binding dynamics remain unclear. Here we addressed this question using C. elegans condensin DC, which specifically binds to and represses transcription of both X chromosomes in hermaphrodites for dosage compensation. Mutants of several chromatin modifiers that regulate H4K20me and H4K16ac cause varying degrees of X chromosome derepression. We used fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) to analyze how these modifiers regulate condensin DC binding dynamics in vivo. We established FRAP using the SMC4 homolog DPY-27 and showed that a well-characterized ATPase mutation abolishes its binding. The greatest effect on condensin DC dynamics was in a null mutant of the H4K20me2 demethylase DPY-21, where the mobile fraction of the complex reduced from ∼30% to 10%. In contrast, a catalytic mutant of dpy-21 did not regulate condensin DC mobility. Separation of catalytic and non-catalytic activity is also supported by Hi-C data in the dpy-21 null mutant. Together, our results indicate that DPY-21 has a non-catalytic role in regulating the dynamics of condensin DC binding, which is important for transcription repression

Developing international business relationships in a Russian context

The collapse of the former Soviet Union has opened up a wealth of business opportunities for companies seeking new markets in the Russian Federation. Despite this, firms intending to do business in Russia have found themselves hampered by cultural differences in business practices and expectations. As Russia integrates into the global economy, understanding such practices and the managerial mindset of business people is crucial for managers who hope to navigate Russia's complex markets. This study draws on the trust literature and adopts quantitative tools to deconstruct the Russian 'Sviazi' system of social capital business networking. We develop a model isolating three dimensions of Sviazi: one an affective or emotional component; the second, a conative component; and the third, a cognitive component. The model provides a useful guide for helping foreign firms to succeed in Russia, while also serving as a basis for further research in the field. Keywords