Can group identity explain the gender gap in the recruitment process?

Despite evidence that the gender gap in the labour market favours men, aggregate findings from correspondence studies show that women are more likely than men to be invited for a job interview. We hypothesize that the predominance of women among recruiters may explain this somewhat puzzling finding; recruiters may favour applicants of their own gender. We use the data from a large-scale correspondence study to test this hypothesis. As expected, we find that female applicants are more likely to receive callbacks for interview. We also see that in our sample the majority of contact persons responsible for the recruitment process are female. More importantly, we find that if recruiter and applicant are of the same gender, then the likelihood that the applicant will be invited for an interview increases. These findings reveal the gender favouritism at the selection stage in the labour market.     

Innovation Processes in the Russian Manufacturing Subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations: An Integrated View from Case Studies

The extant literature acknowledges the role of overseas subsidiaries in the growth and development of multinational companies (MNCs). Such subsidiaries are viewed as critical players in the innovation process at MNCs. This topic remains largely under-researched in the Russian context. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the dynamics of the innovation process in Russian-based subsidiaries of global MNCs. We present qualitative findings that indicate Russian subsidiaries are not only recipients of knowledge and technology developed elsewhere in the MNCs but are active developers of innovative products and solutions.     

Transaction Costs of Entrepreneurs as a Deterrent of Housing Construction Development in Russia

Nowadays realization process of investment and construction projects is not always effective because of imperfection of institutions regulating construction, high investment risks and, as a consequence, increase transaction costs. The facts of the objective existence of transaction costs in the economy, including housing construction, are researched in the article. We have determined that the transaction costs significantly affect the cost of construction, reduce profit entrepreneurs, and indirectly increase the shortage of housing in Russia. Such parts of modern economics as neoclassical economics and institutional economics are methodological basis of the paper. Logical, economic and legal （institutional）, socio-economic approaches were used during the research of transaction costs function. The authors used the complex of ideas and different methods of sociological and economic analysis that allowed deepening the importance of institutional state regulation of business activity in housing construction area. The classification of transaction costs creation was worked out; this model unlike well-known models considers the most important parts of transaction costs which really exist in business activity of construction companies nowadays; implementation of the model allows calculating and predicting this kind of costs in business. Recently Russian government returns to the questions about efficiency of production （increase of labor productivity, efficiency and profitability of production）, therefore attention to the reduction of transaction costs is going to increase profits and efficiency.     

MARKET SELECTION OF FINANCIAL TRADING STRATEGIES: GLOBAL STABILITY

In this paper we analyze the long-run dynamics of the market selection process among simple trading strategies in an incomplete asset market with endogenous prices. We identify a unique surviving financial trading strategy. Investors following this strategy asymptotically gather total market wealth. This result generalizes findings by Blume and Easlcy (1992) to any complete or incomplete asset market.     

Pricing Monitoring Uncertainty in Climate Policy

This article assesses the environmental and economic efficiency of three different approaches to treat monitoring uncertainty in climate policy, namely prescribing uncertainty, setting minimum certainty thresholds and pricing uncertainty through a discount. Our model of the behavior of profit-maximizing agents demonstrates that under the simplest set of assumptions the regulator has no interest in reducing monitoring uncertainty. However, in the presence of information asymmetry, monitoring uncertainty may hamper the economic and environmental performance of climate policy due to adverse selection. In a mandatory policy, prescribing a reasonable level of uncertainty is preferable if the regulator has enough information to determine this level. For voluntary mechanisms, such as carbon offsets, allowing agents to set their own monitoring uncertainty below a maximum threshold or discounting carbon revenues in proportion to monitoring uncertainty are the best approaches for the regulator to mitigate the negative effects of information asymmetry. These conclusions are much more pronounced when agents do not accrue revenues from their mitigation action, other than carbon. Our analysis of monitoring uncertainty under information asymmetry, which results in heterogeneity in the agents’ benefits from abatement, generalizes the classical trade-off between production efficiency and information rents.     

Extralegal payments to state officials in Russia, 1750s–1830s: assessing the burden of corruption

This article uses the records of expenditures from a set of estates that belonged to the Golitsyn family to assess the level of ‘routine corruption’ in Imperial Russia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The data from these books allow us to identify individual cases of unofficial facilitation payments made by the estates and by peasant communes to district‐level officials; to delimit key types of payment situations; and to calculate the sums expended for payments by a given estate in a given year. The resulting numbers are compared to the overall volume of obligations borne by the serfs to the state and to their landlords. Our conclusion is that while the facilitation payments were ubiquitous and accompanied any interaction with the state, the volume of these ‘routine’ payments (as opposed to other forms of extraction) was quite low and they did not put a significant burden on the peasants, while at the same time securing hefty extra incomes for top district officials. Rather, by the last decades of the eighteenth century Russian Imperial officials at the district level might have switched from a tribute‐like extortion from the population at large to acquiring vast sums by collecting unofficial payments in more targeted ways.     

The Effects of Information Disclosure and Board Independence on IPO Discount*

This paper examines the effect of strategic information disclosure and corporate governance on the stock market performance of initial public offering (IPO) firms in France. It argues that information disclosure and board independence mitigate agency problems between the IPO firm and investors, thus reducing the IPO discount defined as the difference between the offer price and the intrinsic value of the firm. However, extensive disclosure may damage the firm's competitive advantage and lead to a curvilinear (an inverted U‐shape) relationship between information disclosure and the IPO discount. Further analysis suggests that it is not necessarily the quantity of information, but rather the type of information, that causes the IPO discount to increase with the amount of disclosure.