Privatization, insider control and managerial entrenchment in Russia

This paper provides new survey evidence on managerial entrenchment and the role of outsiders in the post-privatization restructuring of Russian enterprises. The major findings are that managers are hostile towards outside ownership, and they effectively collude with other employees to preserve insider control. The paper also provides empirical evidence that the gradual accumulation of shares by managers is not based only on a profit motive, but is also driven by their efforts to preserve insider control. The issues raised have relevance to other transition economies where the privatization process has encouraged insider control, such as Ukraine and Belarus.  

中俄韩日四国物流资源整合与物流合作框架

东北亚物流合作是东北亚经济圈全球化发展战略的突破点,运用比较分析法,进行四国物流资源的特色分析,结合四国物流现状与资源条件特点,并提出联合共建物流合作高地、物流基础平台建设、物流合作的保障措施及建议等主要观点,作为构建四国物流合作的框架,为政府及物流各方协调运作,推动物流合作实践提供参考建议。  

CPI bias and real living standards in Russia during the transition

The economies of the former Soviet Bloc experienced large declines in output during the decade of transition which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Yet there are many reasons to believe that measured output and official deflators provide a poor proxy for the change in real living standards in transition economies. This paper uses the Engel curve methodology developed by Hamilton [Hamilton, B. 2001. “Using Engel's Law to Estimate CPI Bias” American Economic Review 91(3): 619–630] to examine changes in real living standards in Russia during the transition period and to provide an estimate of how much the official Russian CPI has overstated consumer inflation. We also examine changes in consumer durables, home production, and subjective well-being to further evaluate changes in living standards. Our findings indicate that CPI bias has caused a substantial understatement of the growth performance of the Russian economy during the transition. Even just allowing household final consumption to be deflated with bias, we find that the level of real per capita GDP in 2001 may be understated by up to 30% compared with using a bias-corrected deflator. Our analysis of consumer durables, home production, and subjective well-being supports the conclusion that the decline in living standards has been substantially less than what is inferred by looking at official statistics on real output.  

俄罗斯经济增长原因及对中国经济发展的启示

俄罗斯经济转型后,经过10年的发展,保持了持续发展的势头。但是,稳定的市场经济秩序仍未建立,在很大程度上经济的基本框架还没有完全确立,还需要进行经济体制的改革。对俄罗斯经济发展的原因进行解读,对中国的经济发展有借鉴意义。从这个视角对中国经济的发展进行了初步的探析,并在理论层面进行了论证。  

中俄木材贸易：现状、问题与对策

中俄双方木材贸易中存在交易产品质量差、交易市场不规范以及双边政策问题等。应采取加强检验工作、完善市场制度以及加强双边企业的合资合作等相应措施，坚持科学发展观，加强对俄交通基础设施和锯木厂的投资，增加可采伐的面积，扩大生产能力，从而实现中俄木材贸易的健康持续发展。  

The effect of privatization on wealth distribution in Russia

The paper considers the Russian privatization process and examines how its deviation from the competitive sale standard was likely to affect wealth inequality. (Privatization here is defined narrowly as the transfer of existing assets from government ownership to private hands.) While empirical evaluation is all but impossible due to the dearth of reliable data, it is feasible to analyze the institutional features of Russian privatization in terms of their effect on redistribution of wealth. The paper argues that the most relevant and interesting issue is to evaluate privatization's distributional consequences relative to the informal pre-reform property rights. In light of this, privatization is modelled as a rent-seeking contest with incumbency advantage of enterprise managers who initially held the greatest informal rights over assets. The rent-seeking contest is shown to strongly magnify this pre-reform wealth inequality reflected in the incumbency advantage.
In addition, the paper analyzes the distributional consequences for various wealth groups of the differences in the composition of their pre-reform informal wealth, most importantly a relatively large share of housing assets in the wealth of the poor. The effect of wealth redistribution on economic growth in Russia is also discussed.  

吉林省对俄罗斯贸易发展现状研究

分析了吉林省对俄罗斯贸易的发展、进出口商品结构和贸易方式等方面的特点；论述和分析了吉林省对俄罗斯贸易的影响因素和运行机制；提出该省对俄罗斯贸易发展的基本思路。