National Award Ceremony in Applied Economics Held at HSE

The prestigious National Award in Applied Economics 2016 has been granted to Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Professor at the Paris School of Economics, and Evgeny Yakovlev, Professor and Director of the New Economic School Data Centre, for their paper ‘The Unequal Enforcement Of Liberalization: Evidence From Russia's Reform Of Business Regulation’. The National Award ceremony took place on April 20, 2016 as part of the XVII April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development.

The National Award in Applied Economics was established in 2009 by the Higher School of Economics (HSE, Moscow), New Economic School (NES, Moscow), the Ural Federal University (UrFU, Ekaterinburg),  Association of Russian Economic Think Tanks (ARETT, Moscow), RAS Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO RAS), and Expert business magazine (Moscow). The award is given once every two years for outstanding published papers that analyse the Russian economy at the country, industry, regional, or company level.

This year 20 papers were nominated, two of them were rejected by the jury as they did not meet the formal criteria such as nomination and publication deadlines. A total of 18 papers were sent for anonymous review to at least two experts, more than half of whom were international scholars from leading universities and research centres.

17 of 18 papers represent the articles published in international journals, including Journal of the European Economic Association, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Law and Economics and Journal of Comparative Economics. The papers were either written by Russian or international authors alone or co-authored by Russian and international scholars. The number of papers in each category was approximately the same.

‘The fact that many works submitted to the contest were co-authored by Russian and international  researchers, published in leading peer-reviewed journals, and widely cited means that the Russian economy is an interesting research topic internationally, and that Russian scholars are well-known and highly qualified,’ — said Laura Solanko, Senior Advisor at the Bank of Finland, member of this year’s jury and the winner of the National Award in Applied Economics - 2014.

The topics were quite varied, ranging from individual and company behaviour on the stock and labour markets to the role of economic and political institutions in economic development, as well as issues related to Russia’s economic history. 

Ekaterina Zhuravskaya and Evgeny Yakovlev examined the Russian reform of the early 2000s aimed at decreasing regulatory costs for business.

 ‘This paper examines the critical question in the development economics: how economic liberalization affects the performance of small businesses, — said  Alexander Muraviev, member of the jury and Associate Professor at the HSE St. Petersburg School of Economics and Management.  The main conclusion of the study is that liberalization has a positive impact on the performance of small firms and affects the growth of small businesses as a whole.  The positive effect is stronger in regions with more transparent local government, better informed residents, stronger and more reform-oriented business lobbyists, and broader autonomy, in other words, in regions with stronger institutions. In our opinion, the work is not only interesting from the point of view of economic science, but may also help to respond to the challenges faced by the Russian economy.’

During the ceremony several papers received  honourable mention, including the following:

• Serguey Braguinsky, Sergey Mityakov, and Andrey Liscovich, 2014. Direct Estimation of Hidden Earnings: Evidence from Administrative Data. Journal of Law and Economics, 57(2): 281-319.
• Julia Shvets, Judicial Institutions and Firms’ External Finance: Evidence from Russia, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, August 2013 29: 735-764.
• Irena Grosfeld & Alexander Rodnyansky & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2013. Persistent Antimarket Culture: A Legacy of the Pale of Settlement after the Holocaust, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 189-226.