Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union and post-Socialist Russia

This article advances the understanding of the present and future of Russian entrepreneurship. Based on secondary information published in the West and in contemporary Russia, empirical research and personal interviews, general characteristics of Russian entrepreneurship within different controversial periods that occurred during different periods of this country's history are presented. Also discussed are the influences of ethnic and religious minorities and foreign businesses on entrepreneurship development as well as the relatively low social status of the entrepreneur. The vitality of entrepreneurial response is discussed in terms of recent events in post-Socialist Russia including the transformation of its economy and society and its integration into the global market. In so doing, the article presents the latest trends in entrepreneurship in the country as well as a profile of the Russian entrepreneur.     

Information and delay in an agency model

This article studies how delay in contracting depends on an exogenous signal. The agent whose cost is his private information may produce in the first period or be delayed until the second period. A signal about the cost of the agent is available between the two periods. The quality of the good can vary; in the benchmark case of no signal, the principal offers the standard Baron‐Myerson contract and there is no delay. Delay is determined by the considerations at the margin and may increase or decrease with a better signal. The value of information can be negative, as a better signal may aggravate the principal's commitment problem. A better signal may also increase the agent's rent and decrease social welfare.     

Work‐Related Migration and Poverty Reduction in Nepal

Using two rounds of nationally representative household survey data in this study, we measure the impact on poverty in Nepal of local and international migration for work. We apply an instrumental variables approach to deal with nonrandom selection of migrants and simulate various scenarios for the different levels of migration comparing observed and counterfactual household expenditure distribution. Our results indicate that one‐fifth of the poverty reduction in Nepal occurring between 1995 and 2004 can be attributed to higher levels of work‐related migration and remittances sent home. We also show that while the increase in international work‐related migration was the leading cause of this poverty reduction, domestic migration also played an important role. Our findings demonstrate that strategies for economic growth and poverty reduction in Nepal should consider aspects of the dynamics of domestic and international migration.     

Riker and Federalism

Forty years since its publication, William Riker’s Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (1964) remains one of the most influential volumes on the politics of federalism. However, in assessing Riker’s federal theory, scholars tend to focus on the specific hypotheses, the famous claim that the “military threat” constitutes a necessary condition for federal success, and upon rejecting the validity of that claim, by association, quickly dismiss the general theoretical argument. But Riker’s federal theory does much more for our understanding of federalism as a form of government than simply connect, rightly or not, federal success with the presence of a military threat. In the paper I argue that the most innovative feature of Riker’s analysis, defining for his contribution to the field and accountable for the emergence of new and original insights was the successful application for the first time of the principle of methodological individualism to institutional and constitutional analysis. Riker’s theory of federalism, when viewed in the context of his intellectual contribution to the studies of democratic institutions, is, indeed, the original point of departure. In the paper, I review Riker’s theory of federalism as embedded in and an integral part of his broader theory of democratic institutions, in order to highlight some of its merits that remained underappreciated until current research has generated the conceptual framework consistent with Riker’s insights. Second, I draw some implications from Riker’s theory for the contemporary challenges of federal constitutional design. For correspondence: filippov@artsci.wustl.edu JEL classification: H77, K1     

Party Fragmentation and Presidential Elections in Post-Communist Democracies

Despite its controversial status as a stable governmental form, many of today's societies attempting to make the transition to democracy have or will, for a variety of reasons, choose presidentialism. Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that the combination of presidentialism and multipartism is especially dangerous for democratic stability (Mainwaring 1994). The question this essay addresses, though, is whether presidential elections themselves serve to encourage a fragmented party system, at least in the initial stages of democratization. In transitional political systems presidential elections encourage party fragmentation, but in a way different from that of highly proportional purely parliamentary mechanisms. Specifically, parties proliferate to support the presidential aspirations of political elites. Multivariate regression analysis on cross-sectional aggregate electoral data, supported by extensive outliers diagnostics and assessments of the role of country-specific effects is applied. A nested model is used to discriminate among the secondary hypotheses. Controls include: parliamentary election rules (district magnitude, threshold for representation, adjustment districts, ballot structure), relative timing of presidential and parliamentary elections, and basic societal cleavage structure. Using as our data source the recent elections in East and Central Europe and the European part of the former Soviet Union, we show that presidential elections consistently significantly increase party fragmentation. At the same time, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that presidentialism does encourage the overall consolidation in party systems through voters' abandonment of some parties, akin to Duverger's 'psychological effect'.     

Strategic interoperability standards and trade taxes

In a two-country international trade framework, the paper considers the interplay between the governments' incentives for conducting traditional trade policies and their incentives for the policies toward compatibility between the products of the firms competing in the international market. The model assumes that one domestic and one foreign firm supply partially incompatible products for the home country market while consumers value both variety and a network externality. Motivated by the benefits of the network externality, the home government sets a standard requiring the foreign firm to guarantee a minimum level of compatibility between its own product and the product of the domestic rival. The paper analyzes the home country standard setting and import tariff policies as well as the incentives of the foreign country for imposing the export tax and conducting a policy which enhances the degree of compatibility between the rival products in the export market.     

Generating of multi-criteria alternatives for decision-making in electric light rail control

The purpose of this paper is to study and evaluate genetic algorithms and scheduling theory about the methods of controlling public electric transport. Scheduling theory can be defined as criteria of time constraints for target functions of the optimal electric transport control task and for electrical process diagnostics task. Mathematical models and procedures are developed for the control of electrical processes and the optimization of railway traffic control, using scheduling theory and multi-criteria of decision making. Functional dependencies between electrical processes and dynamics of electric transport flow states are investigated in the research. Genetic algorithms are investigated for getting dynamic multi-criteria optimization of processes in real time mode. Efficiency of proposed methods about procedures for optimal electric transport flow control is analyzed and. Safety is considered as an inherent component of the total transport system, which embraces infrastructures, goods and containers, transport users and operators, vehicles and vessels, measures at policy and legislative levels includes decision support and validation tools. Integrated safety and security systems for surface transport systems includes advanced modeling, simulation and engineering tools, aiming at the improvement of safety and security performance of transport systems. Development will include methodologies and designing environments for risk based design and approval, roll-over test development and pre-normative research towards regulations based on virtual testing methods as well as mechatronic systems for dynamic stability, reliable and effective braking systems for vehicles. The paper is based on authors＇ previous scientific work which researches the intelligent device systems and their applications in transport systems. Intelligent devices are controllers, which have interface to work in global network and wireless networks, and are programmed to use methods of the artificial intelligence. Intelligent devices have possibilities to negotiate with each other and to coordinate their work to get better decision. The results of experiments show the possibility of the developed systems to prevent accidents and to avoid different problems by intelligent diagnostic and coordination devices.     

International portfolio diversification: a synthesis and an update

This paper provides a synthesis of the existing literature on international portfolio diversification and presents some new results on the subject. We address the question of whether international portfolio diversification is always a reasonable method of reducing the risk of an investment portfolio without negatively affecting its return expectations. Unfortunately, there is still not a simple answer to this question. When ex-post data is examined, potential benefits of international diversification can certainly be detected. However, we also argue that it might be difficult for investors to select an optimal investment strategy ex-ante, when the correlation structure among the international equity is unstable over time. While such findings do not completely rule out the potential benefits of international diversification, they certainly make them more difficult to realize in practice.