Recent decision to raise retirement age in Russia is compared with alternative ways of pension system adjustment to population ageing. We conclude that postponing retirement was superior in terms of public welfare as compared to increasing public spending on pensions or lowering pension size relative to wages. Unlike advanced countries, which apply mainly a combination of higher effective retirement age, less generous pension benefits, and higher pension spending, Russia used various adjustment tools in sequence: sharp decline in pensions to wage ratio in 2002—2007 was followed by a marked increase in pension spending (which hiked almost 3 p.p. of GDP over 2007—2017). Some 2/3 of this growth was attributable to the cut in other spending (mainly “productive”, i.e. growth-enhancing), and 1/3 was financed by a redistribution of income from employees to pensioners. The general decision to raise retirement age thus was fully justified, but its parameters look reasonable only on average. Estimates based on cross-country analysis evidence that retirement age matching healthy life indicators anticipated for Russia would be 63/62 for men/women. Actual decision to increase retirement age to 65/60 maintains sharp gender distortions: the retirement age will remain too low for women and will get too high for men. Fiscal effect of higher retirement age are calculated by comparing pension spending ensuring constant pension to wage ratio under the old and new retirement ages. We find that this effect will stabilize around 3% of GDP in some 10 years after the start of reform. A bulk of this effect is in a sense “virtual”, as it mainly makes possible to evade further increase in pension spending. “Genuine” effect can be estimated as some 1% of GDP — these are public funds saved and available for different purposes, say for supporting programs increasing healthy life expectancy.

In 1981 in Chile the Pinochet regime reformed the state-led PAYG pension system into the private pension system. Chilean experiment attracted the attention of both politicians and experts around the world and laid the foundations for the new pension orthodoxy. As a result, more than 30 countries (mostly in Latin America and in the former Soviet bloc) followed the Chilean model and privatized pension systems. The paper considers the design and results of the Chilean pension reform. The aim of the paper is to show the specific path of transformation of theoretical concepts into actual economic policy. The research provides two key results. The first is that although pension reforms of recent decades were influenced by the ideas of liberalism, their design and implementation in fact suited the pattern of the new paternalism characteristic of “neoliberalism”. The second is that implementation of the Chilean model in other countries was due to the persuasiveness of the discourse of the new pension orthodoxy rather than to actual performance of the Chilean pension system.

This paper is devoted to the estimation of welfare costs of inflation, taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian economy. Theoretical approaches that are used in the literature to analyze the costs of inflation are discussed in the paper. It also provides an overview of the empirical studies of this topic. Research found in academic literature shows that the results of quantitative estimates are extremely sensitive to the choice of the functional form of the money demand equation, as well as to assumptions that are made to simplify the analysis, some of which do not fit Russian data. As a result, we have modified the standard approaches to estimating welfare costs of inflation, taking into account the monetization growth in Russia, and provide quantitative estimates of the magnitude of welfare costs of inflation. The results indicate a significant gain for economic agents in terms of real GDP with a decrease in inflation, which is regarded as a positive effect from the inflation targeting policy.

Inflation targeting in Russia implies maintaining stable low inflation at a level of 4% throughout the country. The presence of structural factors in some regions can determine deviations from the all-Russian inflation, which can lead to different effects of monetary policy in Russian regions. In this paper, we analyze regional heterogeneity of inflation and factors of inflation deviations from the national average, estimate structural levels of inflation in the regions of Russian Federation. These estimates confirm the presence of some regional factors of inflation deviations from the all-Russian indicator, such as the difference in productivity growth of the tradable and non-tradable sectors (Balassa—Samuelson effect), effective exchange rates, real incomes and product stocks. In addition, our results confirm the presence of regions with price growth rate above and below monetary policy target. The results of this research can be used for the development of monetary and communication policies.

The article deals with the problem of determining market boundaries for antitrust law enforcement in the field of telecommunications. An empirical approach has been proposed for determining the product boundaries of the market in the area of mass distribution of messages, taking into account the comparative characteristics of the types and methods of notification (informing) of end users; the possibilities of switching from one way of informing to another, including the evolution of such opportunities under the influence of technological changes; switching between different notification methods. Based on the use of surveys of customers of sending SMS messages, it is shown that the product boundaries should include not only sending messages via SMS, but also e-mail, instant messengers, Push notifications and voice information. The paper illustrates the possibilities of applying the method of critical loss analysis to determining the boundaries of markets based on a mixture of surveys and economic modeling.

In 2019 the doctrine, called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT), broke into the political Olympus. Political, academic and financial circles in the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia are actively discussing what was previously unthinkable: the budget deficit does not matter, the money printing is able to close the gap between government spending and taxes without inflation pressuring and other well-known ideas presented in a new light. The strict criticism of MMT was voiced by the economists of all kinds, from Kenneth Rogoff and Lawrence Summers from Harvard University to Paul Krugman from the City University of New York. All of them claim that under the mask of a new theory simple left populism is hidden. Representatives of MMT believe that when their supporters win in the upcoming elections in the USA, they will open a new page in the history of economics and politics.

The article considers the basic scenarios of matchmaking business contacts between Russian manufactures and bulk distributors from the developing countries and also the factors blocking them. The definition “Communication gap” as the main factor that hinders growth of the Russian export has been introduced. The activities of the basic state and non-state institutions assisting Russian companies to enter foreign markets have been analyzed. The concept of constructing a new export support system by minor adjustment of the special state authorities’ activities and with the use of their available facilities has been suggested. The application of the given approach has special importance for Russian small- and middle-sized producers, many of whom have no access to foreign markets. The main difficulty of this situation is related to the initial contact level.

Reflections on the new book, which focuses on the “economics of history”, give a glimpse on the complex relationships between historians exploring development of economic life and economists seeking to apply methods of economic analysis to rethink historical knowledge. The reviewed book by A. Skorobogatov is an apt example of the difficulties faced by an academic economist who has decided to contribute to the analysis of the history of social development. On the one hand, this book is innovative, being the first example in Russia of a systemic neoinstitutional approach to history. On the other hand, Skorobogatov offers a few controversial speculations, which will be ambiguously perceived by many readers (especially historians). The review concludes that the book lays the appropriate creative groundwork to continue developing the new (for Russia) direction of economic history research.

The aim of this article is to give an overview of the basic ideas of the book “Mesoeconomics: State and perspectives” and to exemplify some distinctive features of the Russian style of economic thinking. Special attention is given to identification of the key elements of Russian mesoeconomics. The author believes that despite not sound enough conceptual framework mesoeconomics is a rather promising field of economic research. It is shown that one of the most important features of doing research in economics in Russia is creative reception of foreign concepts and desire to adapt them to solving practical problems.