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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract This paper investigates the income convergence among Russian regions in the period 1998-2006. It makes two major contributions to rather extensive literature on the regional convergence in Russia. First, it identifies spatial regimes using the exploratory spatial data analysis. Second, it examines the impact of spatial effects on the convergence process. Our results show that the overall speed of regional convergence in Russia, being low by international standards, becomes even lower after controlling for spatial effects. However, when accounting for the spatial regimes, we find a strong regional convergence among high-income regions located near other high-income regions. Our results indicate that estimation of speed of convergence using aggregate data may result in misleading conclusions regarding the nature of convergence process among Russia's regions. Terms of use: Documents in

This paper investigates the income convergence among Russian regions in the period 1998-2006. It makes two major contributions to rather extensive literature on the regional convergence in Russia. First, it identifies spatial regimes using the exploratory spatial data analysis. Second, it examines the impact of spatial effects on the convergence process. Our results show that the overall speed of regional convergence in Russia, being low by international standards, becomes even lower after controlling for spatial effects. However, when accounting for the spatial regimes, we find a strong regional convergence among high-income regions located near other high-income regions. Our results indicate that estimation of speed of convergence using aggregate data may result in misleading conclusions regarding the nature of convergence process among Russia's regions.

We take advantage of a natural experiment in the minimum wage setting in Russia to study the employment consequences of large hikes in the minimum wage. In September 2007, the Russian government raised the federal minimum wage from 1100 to 2300 Rubles and simultaneously gave the regions the power to set their own minima above the federal threshold. In studying the effect of this reform, we follow the approach proposed by David Card and compare changes in employment rates and other labor market outcomes before and after the hike across regions with different shares of affected workers. We find some evidence of adverse effects of the 2007 hike in the minimum wage on employment. They are mostly visible in lower employment rates among the youth, as well as the increased informalization of employment.JEL codes: J38, J23

Using World Values Survey data from several dozen countries around the world, this article analyzes the relationship between postmaterialist values and bribery (dis)approval in a multilevel framework. We find that people, who place stronger emphasis on postmaterialist values, tend to justify bribery more. However, the “ecological” effect of postmaterialism operates in the exactly opposite direction: A higher prevalence of postmaterialist values induces more bribery disapproval, and especially among postmaterialists themselves. In our view, this happens because the large number of people who internalized postmaterialist values generate positive social externalities which strengthen negative attitudes toward corruption. We outline a theoretical framework that explains why and how these externalities may emerge. Our results contribute to the literature on the sociocultural factors of corruption, provide a better understanding of the complex nature of postmaterialism, and also might be interesting in the light of ongoing discussions on whether moral attitudes are culturally universal or culturally specific.

Using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey data, the paper examines Russian workers' fear of unemployment under different economic and labor market conditions during the last 15 years. We employ two alternative measures for this fear. The first one looks at the workers' fear of losing their current jobs, while the second deals with the fear of not finding relevant re-employment in case of displacement. In order to get the best possible measurement of unemployment for those local and social environments where our respondents live and work, we design unemployment rates for narrowly defined regional and demographic (peer) groups. Estimating ordered probit models for both fear measures, and controlling for various worker and job characteristics, we do not find significant causal effects of unemployment on these fears in most of our specifications. These results are robust to exclusion of potentially endogenous variables; they hold for different periods, subsamples, and levels of job security. Moreover, our simulations show that even a large increase in the unemployment rate has little impact on conditional probabilities of expressing a strong or weak fear of unemployment. These results suggest that the high level and persistence of fear of unemployment in Russia may be caused by non-economic factors.

This paper studies the convergence in per capita gross regional products (GRPs) across Russian regions in the period from 1996 to 2017. We estimate growth equations, which are directly derived from a neoclassical growth model, augmented with human capital and migration. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that explicitly applies a neoclassical model to analyze regional convergence in Russia. We also take into account possible spatial effects and do a series of other robustness checks. Our main estimates establish a convergence rate of around 2% per year. While we fail to find any role of human capital for regional economic growth, we find that interregional migration and the interdependencies of the growth of Russian regions contribute to the economic convergence between them.

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