The roundtable participants assessed the effects of the pandemic and analyzed its consequences, the impact on economic and social development. The main attention in the discussion was paid to the pace of economic recovery, anti-crisis mechanisms to support the economy in 2020, which can become systemic, aimed at stimulating investment activity, and suggest new approaches to solving social problems. The participants in the discussion proposed considering the possibility of strengthening the countercyclical nature of the fiscal rule, taking into account not only oil prices, but also other factors of economic activity. It was noted that investments in many sectors have increased, but mainly due to budgetary sources, the role of budgetary policy has also increased. During the pandemic, the role of the state has changed: it has become not only a source of funds, but also a guarantor of investments and social payments. However, the roundtable participants noted that this new role of the state should not be ensured by raising taxes.

We introduce the concept of collaborative hierarchy, a mechanism of collaboration which combines hierarchical and peer-to-peer interactions. In a collaborative hierarchy, a set of participants informatively “subordinate” to the same coordinator forms a peer-to-peer network producing consensual decisions. The advantages of such mechanisms over peer-to-peer mechanisms are noted. The problem of stability of collaborative hierarchies is investigated. In this case it means that they are protected from turning into power hierarchies based on violence. Stability requires high levels of human capital and civic culture. It is achieved through a number of formal organizational principles, such as the selection of coordinators by the level of collaborativity and their regular turnover. Of particular importance for stability is the requirement of reaching consensus. It is demonstrated that a number of Western countries are trying to overcome the crisis of the welfare state by introducing economic reforms providing for the formation of collaborative hierarchies. Our analysis shows that forming of governance hierarchies is compatible with the tendency of crowding out mechanisms of competition and power by mechanisms of collaboration, demonstrated by the philosophy of collaboration. The significance of the findings for Russia is discussed.

The article is devoted to the analysis of modern ideas about the quality of institutions concept, and the development on this basis of its generalized and operational understanding. The interpretation of the quality of the institution as its legitimacy from the point of view of stakeholders of the institution’s performance is grounded. Starting from the understanding of the object or process legitimacy as a recognition of its right to exist, an approximate question is proposed for conducting sociological surveys to assess the quality of institutions. In the final section of the article, the evolutionary definition of the concept of quality is proposed, and it is shown that the identification of the institutions quality with their legitimacy is fully consistent with this definition.

The paper defines the features of the collective dominance institute in Russia as well as the relation between collective dominance and oligopoly in the spheres of law and economic theory. The article evaluates the grounds and consequences of the collective dominance legal norm application; it suggests an approach to examining the relation between effects and expected results of this legal norm application and outlines the potential ways to harmonize the best international practices of the collective dominance norm application with the existing economic standards of product market analysis for the purpose of competition law enforcement. Results of the oligopoly theory and the Russian version of collective dominance institution key elements comparison show: the collective dominance institution concept is inadequately applied to identify individual abuse of dominant position due to possible law enforcement errors. The Russian version of collective dominance institution reflects one fundamental tendency intrinsic to Russian antitrust: examined more closely, law enforcement, which is de jure aimed at protecting competition, appears to be economic regulation, which de facto can lead to competition restriction. One of the possible structural alternatives for the collective dominance institution reforming is based on presumption of the need to analyze the joint impact exerted by a group of undertakings on the market.

The paper utilizes survey data of 2014 and 2018 for the analysis of import as one of the transmission channels of external shocks on the behavior of Russian industrial enterprises. The study aims to reveal strategies of importing under sanctions’ regime and evaluate the potential of import substitution. It demonstrates sustainability of business strategies with regard to importing and maintaining trends of high dependence on import equipment for technological modernization and competitiveness of products. The current scale of import substitution is modest, there is a lack of substantial transformation of geography of importing except radically diminished share of importers from Ukraine. Bi-probit econometric estimations that take into consideration firm’ simultaneous involvement in importing of interim products and equipment demonstrate that import of the former is critically important for the firms exporting to Europe, while the latter is associated with exporting to the members of the Customs’ Union and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Using the Heckman procedure with the data of the European Investment Bank on investment projects implemented on the principles of PPP, the paper identifies factors that are significant for the development of PPP. In particular, the use of PPP turned out to be most sensitive to the maturity of economic development, as well as to the state’s budgetary constraints, which do not allow building all the necessary infrastructure for providing public goods at the expense of the budget. At the same time, there has been found no statistically stable relationship between the institutional environment and the implementation of PPP projects, which may be so due to the quality of the sample — for developing countries, the importance of institutional environment factors, as well as macroeconomic stability, would most likely be more obvious.

The access to credits for companies with high productivity is an important factor for the economic recovery after the shock. In this paper, we analyze changes in banks’ lending to Russian companies’ in 2020. Our analysis shows that in 2020 the volume of new ruble credits increased relative to the level of the previous year. At the same time, there were changes in loans’ structure, which are explained by the effect of government lending support programs that began in May—June 2020. This fact indicates that a large number of firms made use of these programs last year, partially or fully covering temporary liquidity needs in the period of significant decrease in demand and revenue. Outside of the government support programs, the structure of market lending did not change significantly in 2020 compared to 2019. Banks prefer to lend to more productive companies: we see that the volume of credits to high productive firms was at the same level as in 2019. This means that efficient firms that should be drivers of economic recovery did not have problems with access to credit in 2020.

The specifics of the inflation targeting policy pursued by the Bank of Russia lead to the emergence of proposals to empower it with aims, goals or targets to promote economic growth. In the study, the feasibility of such proposals is considered from the point of view of targeting policy properties, arguments in favor of using growth indicators, the possibility of planning with multiple goal-setting conditions, and the impact on expectations. It has been established that the direct empowerment of growth targeting will only lead to the Bank’s claim that there is no opportunity to increase the growth rate. The imposition of the target value can be seen as the erosion of the independence of the Bank. The failure to coordinate goals (if they are set autonomously by the fiscal and monetary policy authorities) will lead to inefficiency. Planning in the context of multiple goals will return the Bank to a situation of dynamic inefficiency, evaporating the low inflationary expectations. The position of the Bank of Russia regarding assessments of potential economic growth and the ability to influence it needs much more detailed presentation than is currently declared in official documents.

The paper considers the modern monetary economic theory (MMT) from the point of view of the approaches to overcome the current economic crisis by recourse to fiscal and monetary tools. It is shown that its proposals are aimed at overcoming the crisis of the U.S. economy through an additional inflow of investment resources from other states with a simultaneous increase in social stability within the country with the support of a quantitative easing race. It also concludes that the level of taxation in developed states reaches the limit beyond which the economic activity is discouraged. The negative consequences for economic subjects of reducing the possibility of maneuvering between national jurisdictions for tax optimization, and the importance of this process for the preservation of U.S. leadership are demonstrated.