Trade Liberalization, Foreign Direct Investment, and Productivity of Russian Firms

The paper studies the effects of liberalization of imports and foreign direct investment on Russian firms. Using the firm-level data from 1995-2001, this paper finds that competition with imports and with FDI exerts a positive effect on domestic firms. This effect is weaker in the case of firms located in complex industries. Increased availability of imported inputs help to improve productivity of domestic firms in the mid-1990s, although the devaluation of the ruble in 1998 temporarily made firms that relied on foreign-produced inputs less competitive. Finally, entry of foreign-owned firms in post-crisis period leads to improvement in TFP of their Russian suppliers.

Trade Liberalization, Foreign Direct Investment, and Productivity of Russian Firms

The paper studies the effect of liberalization of imports and foreign direct investment on Russian firms. Using the firm-level data from 1993-2000, the paper finds that competition with imports and with FDI exerts positive effect on domestic firms. Prior to the 1998 crisis, this effect is weaker in the case of firms located in complex industries. Increased availability of imported inputs or inputs produced by foreignowned firms helped to improve productivity of domestic firms in the mid-1990s, although the devaluation of the ruble in 1998 temporarily made firms relying on foreign-produced inputs less competitive. Finally, entry of foreign-owned firms in some cases leads to improvements in TFP of the firms that produce inputs for foreignowned firms. This effect also weakened after 1998, possibly because of the negative effect of devaluation on foreign-owned firms.

Does Foreign Ownership Matter? Russian Experience

The purpose of the paper is two-fold. The paper compares productivity of Russian firms that received foreign direct investments, and fully domestically owned firms. It also analyses spillovers from foreign-owned firms to domestic firms. Foreign firms are found to be more productive than the domestic ones, however, poor progress of reform in the region negatively affects productivity of foreign-owned firms. At the same time, there are positive spillovers between foreign-owned and domestic firms. This effect if particularly strong in the case of medium-sized firms (between 200 and 1000 employees), while spillovers on small firms are negative. The stock of human capital in the region is one of the main factors, which helps domestic firms to benefit from the entry of foreing firms.foreign direct investment, spillovers

Survey Responses on Desired Fertility in Patriarchal Societies: Community Norms vs. Individual Views

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 norms which are treated as obligatory or highly desirable in the community. The situation causes a "community bias" in survey results. The task of the paper is to show using the example of a survey concerning reproductive behaviour that the expected "community bias" can indeed occur in patriarchal communities. For this purpose, we suggest a relatively simple method of discovering "community bias" and apply this method to the results of a qualitative survey which we conducted in the rural part of the North Caucasus, a region of Russia where patriarchal social norms are quite strong. A characteristic of the North Caucasus which is important for our study is that its village communities, inhabited mainly by Muslims, differ considerably in the degree to which patriarchal norms are preserved there. The central idea of our method is to study the significance of community parameters of patriarchy for individual answers to survey questions. Community parameters are calculated as averages of the individual parameters of women interviewed in the same village community. Multi-level regression models are run for both the actual and the desired number of children, which allow us to distinguish between individual and community effects. In agreement with the "community bias" hypothesis, community characteristics are found to be significant for answers on desired, but not on actual, fertility. Based on this result, some tasks for future research of the "community bias" effect on answers to survey questions concerning reproductive behaviour are suggested

Survey Responses on Desired Fertility in Patriarchal Societies: Community Norms vs. Individual Views

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 norms which are treated as obligatory or highly desirable in the community. The situation causes a "community bias" in survey results. The task of the paper is to show using the example of a survey concerning reproductive behaviour that the expected "community bias" can indeed occur in patriarchal communities. For this purpose, we suggest a relatively simple method of discovering "community bias" and apply this method to the results of a qualitative survey which we conducted in the rural part of the North Caucasus, a region of Russia where patriarchal social norms are quite strong. A characteristic of the North Caucasus which is important for our study is that its village communities, inhabited mainly by Muslims, differ considerably in the degree to which patriarchal norms are preserved there. The central idea of our method is to study the significance of community parameters of patriarchy for individual answers to survey questions. Community parameters are calculated as averages of the individual parameters of women interviewed in the same village community. Multi-level regression models are run for both the actual and the desired number of children, which allow us to distinguish between individual and community effects. In agreement with the "community bias" hypothesis, community characteristics are found to be significant for answers on desired, but not on actual, fertility. Based on this result, some tasks for future research of the "community bias" effect on answers to survey questions concerning reproductive behaviour are suggested

Quantifying interactions on interfaces between metal partic¬les and oxide supports in catalytic nanomaterials

Metal-support interactions can dramatically affect the properties of nanocomposite materials. Nevertheless, comprehensive studies of the interfaces between metal nanoparticles and oxide supports remain scarce due to challenges in experimental characterization. A significant understanding of the interactions at such interfaces can be obtained by combining state-of-the-art experiments with density functional calculations. In particular, this Perspective illustrates how theory and experiment can be combined to study interfacial charge transfer, the short- or long-range natures of nanoparticle-support interactions and the effects of oxide nanostructuring on the properties of supported metal particles. These studies aid our understanding of the role of metal-oxide interactions in industrially employed nanocomposites and the design of interfaces with unique properties for future applications

Effects of electron transfer in model catalyst composed of Pt nanoparticles on CeO2(111) surface

Interactions between transition metal nanoparticles and reducible oxide supports are thought to significantly affect the performance of many catalysts. Usually, several metal-support effects act together and cannot be separated from each other. Herein, by means of density-functional calculations we succeeded to single out and quantify effects of the metal-support electron transfer on the structure and electronic properties of important model Pt-ceria catalysts. Namely, we considered ∼1.5 nm large Pt95 and Pt122 particles supported on CeO2(1 1 1). We show that Pt-ceria interactions notably reconstruct Pt nanofacets forming the interface and shift valence d-states of the Pt particles. These effects are rather insensitive to the Pt-ceria electron transfer, at variance with the electronic structure of oxygen anions at the interface, which is significantly affected by the electron transfer. The findings of this work and the special modeling approach applied pave the way for deeper analysis of electronic metal-support interactions in catalysis