Current Research on Russia
My current research focuses on the Russian economy.
Here is a webpage devoted to
the Russia’s Addiction:
The Political Economy of Resource Dependence, Brookings Press, forthcoming.
Here
is a presentation on “Energy
Security and Cooperation: Implications for Russia and Europe” at the
Transatlantic Colloquium, “Europe, Russia, US Relations,”, Konrad Adenauer
Foundation, September 8, 2007.
Here
is my paper with Cliff Gaddy on Resource
Rents and the Russian Economy. It is published in Eurasian Geography and
Economics.
Here are the remarks that Cliff Gaddy and I presented as the Keynote Speech
delivered at Renaissance Capital’s 4th Annual Equity Conference, “Russia: New
Investment Horizons.” The Metropolitan Club, New York City. October 20, 2005.
The talk was titled “The
Virtual Economy Revisited:
Resource Rents and the
Russian Economy.”
My Presidential Address to the Association for Comparative Economics Studies recently appeared in our journal Comparative Economic Studies. The title is "Economic Pathology and Comparative Economics: Why Economies Fail to Succeed." Here is a draft version.
Here is a paper on “The Political Economy of Structural
Change in Russia,” (with Gur Ofer). It is forthcoming in the European
Journal of Political Economy. Here is the published
version on Science Direct.
Here is a paper on "Reputation and Soft Budget
Constraints" that Alexei Deviatov and I recently completed.
Here is a paper I wrote on Evolution and Transition.
The published version appears in in N. Campos and J. Fidrmuc, eds., Political
Economy of Transition and Development, Boston, Kluwer, 2003.
Dalia Marin has published several articles claiming to have evidence against
the virtual economy hypothesis. The same work also appears in her recent book
co-authored with Monica Schnitzer. Here is a note I have
written which demonstrates why her paper is flawed. The title is a play on that
of her article.
Russia's Virtual Economy
Most of my current work focuses on Russia's Virtual Economy. Much
of this work is joint with Clifford Gaddy of Brookings. Rick Ericson is also an
important collaborator, and probably understands this better than anyone. Here
are various related papers you can download.
Cliff and I have completed our book on Russia's Virtual Economy, published by the Brookings Institution. Information on the book is available here.
Our recent paper The Virtual Economy and
Economic Recovery in Russia examines whether the apparent recovery in the
Russian economy means that the virtual economy hypothesis is no longer
relevant. We argue that this is not the case. Another recent paper studies How to Think About the
Post-Soviet Output Fall.
Our paper An Evolutionary Analysis of
Russia's Virtual Economy explores how the virtual economy developed in
Russia.
Here is an artilce on Mr. Putin's Dilemma. The paper discusses the Impossible Trinity he
faces.
We have also written a paper -- for a study Russia in the 21st Century organized by the Berkeley Program in Post-Soviet Studies for the Carnegie Corporation -- on the evolution of the virtual economy and the implications for Russia's future called, Stability and Disorder: An Evolutionary Analysis of the Virtual Economy. This paper has been published in Victoria Bonnell and George Breslauer, editors, Russia in the New Century: Stability or Disorder, Westview, 2001.
Rick Ericson
(Columbia) and I have just completed a paper that models the virtual economy in
a general equilibrium setting. The paper is called, A Model of Russia's Virtual
Economy, and can be downloaded in pdf format.
The earliest paper Cliff and I wrote on this subject focuses on restructuring and enterprise behavior. We examine the decision to operate in the formal or informal economy. This paper is titled To Restructure or Not to Restructure: Informal Activities and Enterprise Behavior in Transition . This paper is in PDF format. To read it you will need the Acrobat Reader, which can be downloaded for free by clicking here.
Cliff and I also have a paper that explores the system of barter, nonpayments, and tax offsets in Russia. This phenomenon has been called the "virtual economy" in a report made for the Russian Government on the behavior of the 210 largest enterprises in Russia. We explore the foundations of the virtual economy and show how the characteristic features of the current situation in Russia are a result. Most troublesome, the virtual economy appears rather stable, as most participants in the economy have a stake in its persistence. This paper is entitled A Simple Four-Sector Model of the Virtual Economy. A revised version of this paper has just appeard in the journal Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, vol. 40, 2, 1999. In addition to the paper there are comments on the virtual economy by Anders Aslund, Richard Ericson, Ben Slay and Gene Chang.
Barter
A recent paper, written with
Sergei Guriev, explores barter in Russia using a specially created data set of
enterprises is titled, Barter
in Russia. This paper was recently published in a volume edited by
Paul Seabright that is called The Vanishing Rouble for the Cambridge
University Press. The data set matches Goskomstat data on enterprise
performance with a data set on how payments are made. The data set was created
as part of the GET project of the New
Economic School.
There has been an explosion in the use of barter and other non-monetary forms of payment in Russia. This topic is explored in a recent paper I wrote with Kathryn Hendley and Randi Ryterman. This paper is titled Remonetizing the Russian Economy, and is forthcoming in in H. G. Broadman, ed., Russian Enterpise Reform: Policies to Further the Transition, The World Bank, Washington, DC, November 1998. This paper can be downloaded as a pdf file.
Here are some notes I wrote on Russian veksels (bills of exchange). Veksels are one of the key components of non-monetary exchange in Russia, especially in 1997 and 1998.
The Russian Economic Crisis
The meltdown of the Russian economy has garnered increasing attention. There is discussion of putting together another bailout. There is also controversy over the actual causes of the crisis. We utilize our model of the virtual economy to discuss this in our paper, Beyond a Bailout: Time to Face Reality About Russia's "Virtual Economy" , which can be downloaded as a pdf file. This paper, which was written before the last bailout was approved, has just appeared in Foreign Affairs, vol. 77, 5, September/ October 1998. You can access the published version by clicking here.
Cliff Gaddy and I get asked frequently to talk about what went wrong in Russia and we have written up our remarks. The title of this note is Russia: What Went Wrong? and it is forthcoming in Analysis of Current Events. We have also written a paper that focuses on what can be done in the wake of the crisis, entitled, Getting Realistic About Russia: No Time for Illusions. This paper appeared in the Winter 1999 issue of the Brookings Review.
A recent op-ed we wrote for the Los Angeles Times can be found by clicking here .
Sergei
Guriev and I wrote Microeconomic
Aspects of Economic Growth in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union as
part of the Global Research Project on the causes of economic growth for the Global Development Network.
A lot of people still ask me for a copy of "The Myth of Monopoly: A New
View of Industrial Structure in Russia" (with Annette Brown and Randi
Ryterman).
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page was prepared by Barry W. Ickes
Last updated: July 2002
bwickes@psu.edu
http://econ.la.psu.edu/~bickes/index.htm