Misuse of Institutions: Lessons from Transition

The paper explores a phenomenon often observed in transition economies, when newly established institutions are misused, i.e., applied or resorted to for reasons which have little in common with their intended or anticipated purpose. In such incidences institutions become sources of private gains and lose their value-creation role and capacity. We offer a typology of institutional misuse (illustrated by examples from Russian transition), discuss its consequences, and explore reasons why governments and societies fail to serve as institutions’ guardians. Implications misused institutions for economic and political reforms are analysed.institutions, transition, capture, club goods

Hochschild (co)homology of the second kind I

We define and study the Hochschild (co)homology of the second kind (known also as the Borel-Moore Hochschild homology and the compactly supported Hochschild cohomology) for curved DG-categories. An isomorphism between the Hochschild (co)homology of the second kind of a CDG-category B and the same of the DG-category C of right CDG-modules over B, projective and finitely generated as graded B-modules, is constructed. Sufficient conditions for an isomorphism of the two kinds of Hochschild (co)homology of a DG-category are formulated in terms of the two kinds of derived categories of DG-modules over it. In particular, a kind of "resolution of the diagonal" condition for the diagonal CDG-bimodule B over a CDG-category B guarantees an isomorphism of the two kinds of Hochschild (co)homology of the corresponding DG-category C. Several classes of examples are discussed.Comment: LaTeX 2e, 67 pages. v.2: The case of matrix factorizations discussed in detail in the new subsections 4.8 and 4.1

Performance assessment of Russian homeowners associations : The importance of being social

Performance of Russian homeowners associations – non-profits established to manage common property in residential housing – is assessed using the stochastic frontier technique, which is a powerful tool of productivity analysis. Performance variations are explained by physical and social factors, prominent among them is the availability of social capital among tenants, required to resolve collective action problems and ensure accountability of managing bodies and outside contractors. Lack of civic capacity could be an obstacle to implementing community-governance solutions in residential housing, making homeowners associations dysfunctional or prone to capture by vested interests.homeowners associations; non-profit organizations; common property; stochastic frontier; social capital

Input Markets Development, Property Rights, and Extra-Market Redistribution

The paper links the intensity of re-distributional activities within an economy to the availability of the input markets. When an individual is faced with a choice between productive vs non-productive (re-distributional) activities, the outcome heavily depends on whether this individual can match his/her personal endowment of human resources (labor, entrepreneurial talent, skills etc.) with commensurable quantities of transferable economic inputs, which are required to complement the human resources in production technologies. If the markets for these inputs are missed or impeded, rational individuals could be forced into re-distribution, where "technologies" do not require matching inputs. However, the development of the input markets alone is not sufficient to suppress redistributional activities. Another factor to be taken into account is the degree of protection of property rights. An equilibrium model is presented to demonstrate that if property rights are adequately protected, then opening of the input markets undermines the incentive to seek re-distributional gains. On the other hand, if property rights are protected poorly, making input markets available could further stimulate re-distribution, as the society is getting richer, and the rate of return to re-distributional efforts goes up. Implications of the above observations for institutional change and economic reform are briefly discussed in conclusion

Misuse of institutions: Lessons from Transition

The paper explores a phenomenon often observed in transition economies, when newly established institutions are misused, i.e., applied or resorted to for reasons which have little in common with their intended or anticipated purpose. In such incidences institutions become sources of private gains and lose their value-creation role and capacity. We offer a typology of institutional misuse (illustrated by examples from Russian transition), discuss its consequences, and explore reasons why governments and societies fail to serve as institutions' guardians. Implications misused institutions for economic and political reforms are analysed

Russian Federalism: Economic Reform and Political Behavior

This paper explores the implications from Russian federalism of the "new" interregional economic inequality produced by the structural distortions inherited from the central planning, and immaturity of the Russian markets. As a result, regional preferences over federal policies are widely diverse, which makes a nation-wide consensus hard to reach. It is argued in the paper that high correlation between political and regional divides in Russia renders the federation unstable and that the instability, in its turn, reproduces interregional disparities. These links are also illustrated by a simple equilibrium model presented in the Appendix. When the federal legislative bodies are "uprooted", captured by extra-territorial narrowly based interest groups, and lose their accountability to the voters, regional administrations emerge as representatives of their jurisdictions on the federal scene, and decision-making at the federal level assumes the form of federal-provincial bargaining. Such bargaining entails vast efficiency losses, since the federal administration is pressed to spend its resources for buying compliance of regional counterparts, instead of providing mandated public goods. It is stated in conclusion, that until markets integrate Russian regions and hence locally based political interests, the country will be failing to develop "market-preserving federalism" (Weingast, 1995), i.e. a federal system which stimulates economic growth and imposes self-enforcing restrictions on counterproductive discretion of public officials

ZASTOSOWANIE WYPOSAŻENIA AUTOMATYZACJI HYDRAULICZNEJ W CELU POPRAWY EFEKTYWNOŚCI ELEMENTÓW OPERACYJNYCH MASZYN MOBILNYCH

The application of adaptive drives in working units of various technological and mobile machines is considered. The results of theoretical and experimental research have proved the effectiveness of their use for improving the dynamic characteristics of machines, reducing unproductive power losses during their operation.W pracy rozważane jest zastosowanie napędów adaptacyjnych w jednostkach roboczych różnych maszyn technologicznych i mobilnych. Skuteczność zastosowania tych algorytmów do poprawy charakterystyk dynamicznych maszyn, przy jednoczesnym zmniejszeniu nieproduktywnych strat mocy podczas pracy potwierdziły wyniki badań teoretycznych i eksperymentalnych

Institutions and social capital in group lending

Formal institutions and social capital interact with each other in multiple ways. We argue and show empirically at the cross-country level that in the case of group lending, contract enforcement complements bonding social capital and substitutes for bridging one. It means that payoff to social capital in group lending depends on social capital type and is contingent on the quality of contract enforcement which serves as a sorting factor, working in the opposite directions for different stripes of social capital. These results are robust to various estimations, sets of controls, and social capital measures

Stochastic frontier in non-profit associations’ performance assessment (the case of homeowners’ associations)

The paper demonstrates the potential of the stochastic frontier-based methods of performance assessment of non-profit associations. They are commonly used for productivity analysis and could serve as an adequate tool for such assessment, especially when dealing with numerous non-profits pursuing identical and clearly identified objectives. A case in point is homeowners associations (HOA), which are formed within apartment buildings to manage common property. Data was collected by a survey of 82 HOAs in Russia’s national capital Moscow and a large industrial city of Perm. Different techniques and robust checks are applied, exogenous parameters that influence HOA efficiency are revealed. Among those, physical conditions of the housing stock and ability of tenants to resolve the collective action problem in operating housing infrastructure were shown to be of primary importance. Overall, HOA, despite of their appeal and successful performance in developed nations, are not necessarily a superior option in countries and societies where civic capacity is in short supply, and housing stock suffers from wear and tearstochastic frontier; non-profit organizations; homeowners associations; social capital; housing and communal services reform