State-of-the-art of Russia’s heat supply systems

The paper overviews the contemporary state of Russia’s heat supply systems and fuel consumption within its centralized part, the structure of heat consumption by economic sectors and types of industrial consumers. As shown, the centralized heat supply systems, providing the major part of country’s economy with low temperature heat, have heat losses and accident rate at a critical level. The state of decentralized heat supply systems of low rise buildings is not covered by national statistics at all. A second paper on the prospects and development of Russia’s heat supply systems will be published in a subsequent issue.     

How a Reduction of Standard Working Hours Affects Employment Dynamics

December 1, 1996 a new law was implemented in Portugal to gradually reduce the standard workweek from 44 to 40 h. We study how this mandatory reduction affected employment through job creation and job destruction. There was considerable regional, sectoral and firm-size variation in the share of workers who were affected by the working hours reduction. We exploit this variation to assess the impact of the workweek reduction. We find evidence that the working hours reduction had a positive effect on employment through a fall in job destruction.     

The Poverty of Politics: How Income Redistribution Hurts the Poor

In spite of the significant research literature identifying a tradeoff between income redistribution and economic growth, massive public programs have been implemented to help the poor by transferring income to them. Since Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty began in 1964, over 3.5 trillion dollars have been transferred. However, the possibility that everyone, including the poor, may in fact be made worse off by the transfer has largely been ignored. With a simple algebraic model, the authors demonstrate that, over time, both high and low-income groups are harmed by redistribution. In addition, social mobility, as well as political concerns with relative poverty and international income redistribution increases the damage to all income groups produced by redistribution.     

Macroeconomic factors of growth of Russian cities and town planning policy objectives

This paper was prepared for the 70th birthday of Oleg Sergeevich Pchelintsev, but he did not live to see it in print. For memorials of O.S. Pchelintsev, see www.demoscope.ru Nos 243–244 of April 17–30, 2006. The paper analyzes the channels and ways by which macroeconomic policy impacts the development of urban settlement and individual groups of cities. Its findings are used to validate new directions and measures of urban policy