• S. Ivanov — International Migration in Russia: Dynamics, Policies, Forecast
• V. Gimpelson, A. Zudina — Informal Workers in the Russian Economy: Who Are They and How Many?
• E. Efimova — Low-wage Workers on the Labor Market of the Russian Federation Regions: What Russian Statistics Does not Say
• D. Strebkov, A. Shevchuk — Electronic Self-employment in Russia

• I. Rozmainsky — Why Does Health Capital Increase in the Developed Countries and Decrease in Post-Soviet Russia? (An Attempt at Post Keynesian Explanation)
• O. Chirkunov — Managing Motives in Public Health
• I. Kotlyarov, A. Balashov — The Contradictions of the State Policy on Regulation of Prices on Medicines: Problems and Ways of Their Solving

Abstracts

The paper is devoted to Maurice Allais, the Nobel prize winner and one of the most original and deep-thinking economist whose centenary is celebrated this year. The authors describe his contributions to economics, and his place in contemporary science — economics and physics, as well as his personality and philosophy. Scientific works by Allais, albeit translated into Russian, still remain little known. The present article aims to fill this gap and to pay tribute to this outstanding intellectual and academic, who deceased last year, aged 99.

The paper analyzes ambiguity aversion that is one of the main anomalies characteristic for the individual behaviour of economic agents making choice in the face of uncertainty. It shows that this phenomenon plays a major role in the contemporary rational choice theory and hence is widely discussed both by economic theorists and experimental economists. The article further elaborates on the nature of this phenomenon and considers its main causes.

Large flows of migrants into low fertility countries increase the weight of international migration in the population dynamics. The current net migration inflow to Russia is about 350 thousand people per year. Migration hypotheses of the population projections include the assumption of constancy of this level until 2050; net migration of 50 thousand people per year; zero net migration and net migration at the level of 900 thousand people per year. Migration hypotheses are combined with the hypotheses of future trends in fertility, including the low, the middle and the high variants. With low fertility and zero net migration the population by 2050 will be reduced by almost half. Stable migration combined with low fertility will not prevent depopulation of the order of almost ¹/₃ by 2050. If fertility trend follows the high path and migration remains constant the population size will be restored in 10 years and then will increase by 10 per cent. Тo restore the population size by 2020 with slowly increasing fertility, approximately 1,5 million people more should immigrate into Russia every year than emigrate from it.

The paper discusses the evolution of the informal employment in the Russian labor market over the last decade. It uses all consecutive waves of the Labor Force Survey conducted by the Russian Federal State Statistics Service in 1999—2009. Looking inside the informality and tracing its evolution over time, we pay special attention to heterogeneity of the informal employment and distinguish salaried informal workers and informal self-employed as two major informal groups. Simple descriptive analysis is complemented by estimating marginal effects from multinomial logit regressions. Additionally, we use cross-section estimates of informality for all Russian regions for 1999—2009 and build a new hand-made panel database with regions as observations.

Approaches to the definition of the number of low-wage workers, developed in the world practice, are investigated in the paper. Using Eurostat approach, the author defines decency wage threshold and the share of low-wage workers in the Russian Federation in 2007—2009. The reasons for low wages in the Russian regions are revealed, and recommendations to reduce the number of low-wage workers are offered.

The paper is devoted to electronic self-employment as a new phenomenon of the labor market in the information society. The authors analyze the growing sector of self-employed professionals (freelancers) working remotely via Internet. Extensive quantitative data from online standardized surveys reveal the main demographic, social and professional characteristics of Russian-speaking e-lancers, as well as motivational, organizational and financial issues.

The article formulates the post Keynesian approach to dynamics of health capital. The author shows that this dynamics scarcely depends on rational calculation of expected benefits and costs because these are unknown. Investment in health capital is determined mainly by the degree of animal spirits, features of conventional judgment, habits, social norms and rules. In the developed countries these factors contribute to accumulation of health capital and, consequently, increasing life expectancy. In post-Soviet Russia health capital decreases — and life expectancy is low — first of all, due to investor myopia (unwillingness to take into account distant future) caused by higher uncertainty.

Certain solutions in politics and economics seem self-evident, at first glance. It seems one should simply correct an obvious mistake and the world will change for the better. However, when the good deed has been done, the result may be quite far from what was expected. Reforms can only be successful if they take into account the interests and motives of all the participants of the process. Starting from this thesis, the author discusses the stages in the public health reform in Russia and proposes an explanation why many government’s actions in this field turn out to be ineffective and fail to reach the intended goal.

The article analyzes the existing model of regulation of prices on medicines in the Russian Federation. Problems of this model are described (especially the fact that it stimulates elimination of cheaper medicines from the product range of pharmacies and pharmaceutical distributors and hinders investments into local development of innovative medicines). Ways to solve these problems are proposed. It is demonstrated that all medicines should be divided into three groups according to their price, and for each group a special method of price regulation should be used. It is also proposed to implement a guaranteed level of profitability of local developers of innovative medicines.