Corruption is a burning issue in Russia that won’t go away. What is the general attitude to corruption in Russia and other countries, and why does it draw so much public attention? How should we study this phenomenon? Lili Di Puppo, Associate Professor at the HSE Faculty of Sociology, author of the course ‘The Sociology of Corruption’ talked to the HSE news service, to help shed some light on the matter.
Research & Expertise
Most Russian banks do not skimp on risk management costs. The only exception are aggressive retail lenders too fixated on cost-cutting, said Mikhail Mamonov at the HSE's XV April Conference.
The ability to provide enough food for yourself, and have a surfeit to sell for export, is becoming a way for states to influence world politics and the economy, says Alina Savelyeva, assistant to the Dean at the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs. In the lecture she delivered at the HSE’s XV April International Conference 'The role of food potential in modern international politics', Savelyeva considers the mechanisms of how food can be a weapon.
From 28th March to 4th April 2014 the Laboratory for Comparative Social Research is holding its 4th International Workshop 'Social and Cultural Changes in Cross-National Perspective: Values and Modernization' at the HSE in Moscow. Key note speaker Arye Rattnet gave a short interview to the HSE English Language News Service about his positive experience of working with HSE students and researchers.
The growth of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), surrogate motherhood, etc, have changed our very idea of parentage. The concept of a parent as an integral and inseparable whole is now being broken down into a number of different roles – there are ‘genetic’ mothers, ‘birth’ mothers and ‘feeding’ mothers while fathers can be ‘genetic’ or ‘social’. This atomisation of parenthood explains the prevailing ambiguous attitude towards ART as Olga Isupova, Alexei Belianin and Anna Gusareva showed in their presentation at the HSE XV April International Conference ‘Economic and Social Development’, in the ‘Demography and Labour Markets’ Section.
As part of the XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, a ceremony took place to award the National Prize for Applied Economics, which this year went to William Pyle and Laura Solanko for their convincing validation of Mancur Olson’s hypothesis using unique data on Russian business associations.
Russians are failing to cope with debt; small town economies are lagging behind; the Russian market is not favourable for a defined-contribution pension system, and Russian statistics are unsuitable for analysis — these were the top 15 most interesting papers from the HSE's XV April Conference, according to Opec.ru
Ronald Inglehart, Academic Supervisor at the HSE Laboratory of Comparative Social Research in St. Petersburg, has been affiliated with the HSE for several years now. He shared some of his impressions of the XV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development and findings of the 4th LCSR International Workshop, which was part of the event.
Attila Havas, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, shared his views with the HSE news service on the development of foresight practices in Russia and around the world, and talked about his impressions of the April Conference.
Massimiliano Onorato, Assistant Professor Economics and Institutional Change at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca (Italy). His interests include political economy and macroeconomic development.