The area of the Kaliningrad exclave comprises the northern part of the former German region of East Prussia (Ostpreußen) with the capital Kaliningrad (formerly named Koenigsberg), home of philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724Kant ( -1804. Historically, the area of East Prussia was shaped by German settlers since the 13 th century, who soon became the dominant ethnic group. Later

In this study we estimate the income elasticity of spending on different healthcare services and medication in Russia, taking into account the non-linear relationship between income level and expenditure. We employ the RLMS-HSE data, 2006–2017, to estimate the elasticities at household level. Our findings show these elasticities have not changed over the years. Additionally, we show that low-income and high-income households demon­strate different levels of elasticities, which is consistent with the fact that healthcare is less affordable for the poor. The study confirms that healthcare and medication are close to luxury level for low-income households and drugs are almost income inelastic for rich households. The results could help to reveal which services are the least affordable for the population.

1This article describes existence differences in the level of entrepreneurship in manufacturing industry among Russian regions with particular attention to European and Siberian territories of the country. I tested the hypothesis that regions are more entrepreneurial if they will contain more urbanization, higher shares of educated and young people and better transport infrastructure. I analyzed panel data for 80 regions for a time period since 2005 till 2011 years. The estimations showed that the existence of differences were predicted by variables: the share of young people, the rate of agglomeration, the share of people with tertiary education (specialist's diploma), the transport infrastructure and the specialization of those territories. At that time, the share of employed population with tertiary education is not significant for European part of Russia and significant for Siberia. Thus, human capital is more important for Siberian entrepreneurs than transport infrastructure than in European part of Russia.

This study investigates the effect of a twofold rise in fixed payments on sole-proprietors and entrepreneurial activity in 2013 and a twofold decline in these payments in 2014. The paper considers consequences of this decision for various facets of entrepreneurship: the presence of small and medium enterprises in an economy, the new business entries, and employment in small and medium enterprises. To find a solution to this problem, we use a difference-indifferences method of policy evaluation. Results of this analysis show that because of a sharp rise in fixed payments, the number of sole-proprietors increased and there was a dramatic fall in the number of new businesses. In addition, employment in small and medium firms also decreased by this decision to raise payments. The decrease in fixed payment in 2014 could not compensate for the negative effects of the previous year among small businesses. Despite various measures to support entrepreneurship, new business entries continued to decline, although the speed of this decline decreased after 2013. Thus, the decrease in fixed payments became an incentive to compensate only some decrease over 2013. The results show that entrepreneurs have a very rapid response to fiscal load increase and have a slow response to decreases in taxation.

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. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper investigates the persistence of entrepreneurship in the region of Kaliningrad between 1925 and 2010. During this time period the area experienced a number of extremely disruptive shocks including; devastation caused by World War II, a nearly complete replacement of the native German population by Soviets, and 45 years under an antientrepreneurial socialist economic regime followed by a shock-type transition to a market economy. Nevertheless, we find a surprisingly high level of persistence of industry-specific self-employment rates in the districts of the Kaliningrad region. Our analysis suggests that persistence of entrepreneurship is higher in regions with a history of successful entrepreneurship. That is, in regions where a specific industry was particularly efficient and entrepreneurial activity was especially pronounced.JEL classification: L26, N94, P25, P5