RUSSIAN MODERNIZATION IN THE CONTEXT
According to the opinion of the president of the INDEM foundation, the separation of functions between the power and civil society is the key condition of modernization. The power provides the wholeness and stability of the system, and civil society - adaptability to external shocks and internal problems. The article analyzes the ways by which institutions with new properties - evolution and transformation - emerge. Russia needs the last modernization, and it should adopt not the results but the ways to achieve them. Civil society must be the main driving force of this modernization.
The article deals with the issues of political and economic power as well as their constellation on the market. The theory of public choice and the theory of public contract are confronted with an approach centered on the power triad. If structured in the power triad, interactions among states representatives, businesses with structural advantages and businesses without structural advantages allow capturing administrative rents. The political power of the ruling elites coexists with economic power of certain members of the business community. The situation in the oil and gas industry, the retail trade and the road construction and operation industry in Russia illustrates key moments in the proposed analysis.
The article considers the concept of strategic effect in international economic relations in a narrow sense, as a gain of national economy from purposeful support of the branches participating in international competition on oligopolistic markets. The mechanism of the competition of this kind according to the theory developed by J. Brander and B. Spencer is analyzed. The influence of the government support of domestic producers on the situation on oligopolistic markets and the opportunities of carrying out such policy under conditions of the effective WTO rules are considered (subsidization of aircraft industry by the WTO members is analyzed as an example).
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The article considers comparisons of Russias GDP with other countries basing on the new data recently presented by OECD-Eurostat. The economic potential of Russia is analyzed in retrospect of 20 years with forecast for mid- and long-term. Special attention is paid to new conditions of economic growth that have formed after the global crisis. The necessity of transition of our country to a new model of socio-economic development in order to accelerate it is grounded.
ISSUES OF THEORY
The second part of a larger work devoted to the modern behavioral economics considers nonstandard preferences that are manifest in altruistic behavior and charitable giving. The author also deals with nonstandard beliefs and shows how overconfidence, incorrect estimation of probabilities and extrapolation of previous experience produce biases in the rational decision-making, including the behavior on financial markets.
DEBATING SOCIETY
The last decade in Russia has been marked by an expansive growth of interest to measuring the level of institutional maturity and quality. These measurements are carried out through international comparisons, correlation coefficients between the quality of institutions and GDP are calculated. However, these estimations are mostly possible within the framework of assumptions of the public choice theory. The paper attempts to prove that this theory uses the same assumption of homo oeconomicus, as conventional microeconomics. Therefore, the public choice theory has the same shortcomings that may be attributed to the neoclassical paradigm as a whole.
ECONOMIC PROBLEMS OF RUSSIAN ANTIMONOPOLY LEGISLATION
The article is devoted to antitrust policy towards tacit collusion as a form of coordination that restricts competition. Competing approaches to define tacit collusion, i.e. concerted practice and excessive monopoly price as an abuse of dominance, are compared. The evidence that allows to reject the hypothesis on concerted practice as a form of tacit collusion is discussed and compared with the criteria used by Russian antitrust authorities to consider practice as concerted. The standards of proof adopted leave the possibility for type I errors when actions of sellers which had no intention to restrict competition and/or coordinate the prices are qualified as illegal. Moreover, there is a possibility to qualify as illegal the actions that do not comply with the definition of concerted practice in the law "On protection of competition".
The article discusses the recent practical results of vertical restraints regulation in Russia. Despite of the apparent similarity of Russian and EU vertical restraints regulation, the practical results of their application differ. The reason is the continuing confusion of horizontal and vertical agreements regulation and the prohibition of vertical restraints totally on the ground that they have anticompetitive consequences paying no attention to their positive effects. The antitrust regulation which prohibits «coordination of concerted practices» displaces other vertical restraints regulations. The article also argues against the growing practice of proscription of distribution systems through appointed dealers.
The article is devoted to the influence of the judicial system on the competition development in Russia. The role of the judicial system in forming acceptable standards of proof in antitrust cases, in decreasing uncertainty in the antitrust law implementation is discussed. The issue of possible increase of the role of antitrust law private enforcement is also discussed. The article argues that the influence of the judicial system on antitrust law implementation and competition is ambiguous. On the one hand, there are some positive effects from decreasing uncertainty in the law implementation, rather high standards of proof in the majority of antitrust cases, really adversary character of the judicial process. On the other hand, the judicial authorities position on some issues, for instance qualification of tacit collusion, has turned for the worse. The serious problem is lowering the standards of proof in some politically committed cases.