Even considering an 8.5% increase in wages, regional budgets will not be able to avoid a deficit for 2014. The federal centre will have to find additional funds to pay for Russian federal subjects’ spending or else the subjects will be forced to increase debt, experts from the HSE Centre of Development Institute said in the latest issue of New Comments on the State and Business.
Russian statistics are scarce, inaccurate, ormissing – and therefore misleading, rather than helpful. Their limited temporal depth makes any reliable long-term projections of the country's socio-economic development impossible, according to the report 'Russian Statistics: What Do They Preserve for History?' by Vladimir Bessonov, Head of the HSE’s Laboratory for Research in Inflation and Growth.
A drop in food prices, particularly fruit and vegetable prices, usually observed in summer, and an improved situation in the commodity markets have helped slow down the rate of inflation, according to expert analysis in Comments on State and Business published by the HSE's Centre for Development.
The government in Russia has been the main customer for research and development (R&D) since 2009, while the real sector of the economy finances only a third of the total R&D costs of innovation-focused research companies, according to findings from a monitoring of innovation activity carried out by the HSE's ISSEK.
Experts from the HSE Center for Business Tendency Studies at the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge have found that limited demand, high taxes, lack of financial means and a high level of uncertainty in the onward course of economic development all reduce the length of time for which businesspeople can plan, in turn obstructing investment and innovative initiatives.
The economic crisis in European countries did not pass by unnoticed as concerns the public’s set of values. In some groups, there was a shift from emancipative values to more traditional ones. Above all, this involves the socially vulnerable strata that the crisis hit hardest of all, Natalia Soboleva, a researcher with HSE’s Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSS), concluded in a study.
Data from Rosstat and the Federal Customs Service suggest that import substitution – not limited to substituted Ukrainian imports – has played a major role in keeping the Russian economy from recession in the first half of 2014. However, Russia cannot expect to achieve a sustained and dynamic GDP growth without boosting exports, in particular its non-commodity exports, according to expert analysis in Comments on State and Business published by the HSE's Centre for Development.
A satisfactory health condition and a low pension could theoretically be what make pensioners continue working in the first years after beginning their well-deserved relaxation. The main medical factors that keep older individuals from working are disability, the aftermath of strokes and frequent hospital treatment, Ekaterina Maltseva, a Research Assistant at HSE’s Laboratory of Economic Research of the Public Sector, said in the study, 'The Impact of Health on the Labour Supply of Pensioners'.
Despite its thriving banking sector, Russia's industrial production remains stagnant, as financial institutions are failing to support development in the real sector. Vassilisa Makarova, Associate Professor at the HSE's Department of Financial Markets and Financial Management (Faculty of Economics, St. Petersburg), and Andrei Krylov, postgraduate student at St. Petersburg State University of Economics, examined the controversial relationship between Russian banks and industry.
A seasonal revival in consumer demand stimulated an increase inretail trade in Q2 2014. Food retail showed the best results, but intensified moods to save household earnings, a slowdown in income growth, high inflation, and difficulties in obtaining consumer credit might soon change the situation, according to experts from the Centre for Business Tendency Studies at the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge at the Higher School of Economics in their latest monitoring of the retail business climate.
