This article discusses changes in the structure of world trade and the features of integration of Russian economy into the global exchange of goods and services. There is an increasing competition on global markets of goods and services that require high-skilled labor. During the last two decades, the structure of Russian export has not gained positive diversification shifts and comparative advantage in high value added goods. The article discusses the following problems of Russian trade policy: an overestimation of traditional sectors’ export potential, a lack of attention to the problems of integration into global value chains and international industrial cooperation, and an untapped potential of fast-growing medium-sized companies. The agenda of prospective Russian trade policy might include a transition to a broad interpretation of trade policy oriented towards long-term structural changes in the economy and a change in the positioning of sectors in global value chains, combined with measures to develop human capital and institutions, determining the further formation of the service sector.

After the introduction of sanctions against Russia, the volume of both exports and imports in the country fell sharply. The purpose of the study is to identify the possible impact of news information, taking into account its emotional color, on the volume of foreign trade of Russia during the sanctions period. The empirical base of the study included news texts of Thomson Reuters Agency from the beginning of 2012 to may 2018 and indicators of export and import of Russia. Using the methods of text analysis (sentiment-analysis based on NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon and calculating the semantic distance between words) and econometric modelling, the influence of the tone of news about Russia for the period from March 2014 to May 2018 was studied. As a result of the study, it has been found that there is a relationship between the content of news reports about Russia and the volume of its export-import operations. Sanctions pressure creates a negative reputational background around Russia, which reduces its attractiveness as a foreign trade partner for other countries.

A model of the shifting mode of reproduction (SMR-4), considering inflation as an endogenous phenomenon, has been built. A new approach to explaining the non-neutrality of money in the short and long term has been proposed. Scenario calculations were performed using the SMR-4 model. The main theoretical result: it is shown that the well-known position on the neutrality of money in the long term is only a special case of the economy’s response to issuing money. Depending on the income indexation coefficient (w), issuing money in the long run can generate growth without inflation, can generate both growth and inflation at the same time, finally, it can lead to inflation against the background of a recession (stagflation). Using the SMR-4 model, it is shown that the preservation of restrictive monetary policy in Russia for the period up to 2022 can be explained by the overestimated level of the coefficient w. The latter reflects the state of the basic institutions of the economy. The higher it is, the less developed they are. The increased w index indicates a situation where capital owners spend their income on anything but investment in domestic fixed capital. Some measures have been proposed to change this situation.

Contemporary state of financial market, which acts in destabilizing way on the mechanism of capital reproduction, requires the theoretical understanding of the causes of this situation. The author approaches to the solution of this task from the position of Marxist theory of money and capital, considering the development of monetary economy under the capitalism as a consequence of the development of financial capital. Contemporary stage of this development is characterized as involution (“back” evolution, dissolution of fundamental relations or even degeneration). Both financial capital and monetary system in the conditions of late capitalism cannot exist without including into themselves the elements, which are contradicting the basis of capitalist system, but compensating the consequences of its decay.

The Niskanen model of bureaucracy has found very limited use in Russia beyond the training courses, despite criticism aimed at the Russian government, administrative reform, and civil service reform. Meanwhile, the accumulated volume of data on the public expenditures allows us to test theoretical observations of the model empirically. The article proposes an assessment of the expenses of the institutions funded by the federal budget in 2005-2017 from the point of Niskanen’s theory. The data source is the laws on the execution of the federal budget, the subject of the analysis is the ability to increase expenditures (in comparable prices) by two times relative to the initial level. It has been found that changes in expenditures are in line with the assumption that bureaus are oriented toward absorbing public surplus by increasing their own budgets. At the same time, a restriction in demand was found essential, so the possibilities for expanding the budget are not fully utilized. Thus, the potential of basic models of bureaucratic behavior can be used in practice, for evaluation of the evolution of authorities government bodies and the effectiveness of budget expenditures.

The paper provides a critical assessment of pan-institutionalism — an approach which tries to explain the course of the world economic history by changes in formal economic and formal political institutions. The paper demonstrates methodological narrowness, conceptual inconsistency and historical inadequacy of pan-institutionalism. The second part of the article analyzes the historical ideas of pan-institutionalists and shows that this approach fails to provide a coherent explanation of the turning point of the world economic history — the Industrial revolution in England in the mid of XVIII century, i.e. a transition from Malthusian to Schumpeterian economic growth.

Many factors influence firms’ growth possibilities and market positions. This paper deals with business models as company’s competitiveness determinant; the case of Russian leading pharmaceutical companies is studied. The review of global pharmaceutical leaders’ business models is presented. Russian leaders are indentified basing on empirical data provided by SPARK database. It has been found that they use models of disruptive research, models aimed at business value growth as well as models of active portfolio management. Characteristics and perspectives of each model type are determined.

In this research note, the T11 survey methodology was adapted for the analysis of anti-money laundering legislation. The note studies the reasons for the compliance of financial organizations with anti-money laundering legislation over time. Factors that increase the risk of non-compliance with the Russian anti-money laundering law have been identified. They are related to shortcomings in the interdepartmental distribution of responsibilities, lack of information and non-governmental and public control.

Having started from actively opposing standard (neoclassical) economics, behavioral economics has, by now, reached quite wide academic recognition, having become a part of the mainstream economics itself. Broad usage of behavioral ideas and approaches in government (and corporate) policy has been named “liberal paternalism” and Richard Thaler, the 2017 Nobel prize winner and former adviser to president Barack Obama has probably contributed more to developing and popularizing it than anyone else. This paper offers a review of his book “Misbehaving” (its Russian translation was published in 2017).