• Gz. W. Kolodko — Ethical Aspects of Business, Economy and Politics
• O. Bogomolov — Moral Factor of Social and Economic Progress

• A. Navoi — Foreign Direct Investments: The Indirect Way to Economy
• B. Kheifets — External Sector of the Russian Economy
• A. Dvoretskaya — Capital Market Resources as the Financial Source of Real Sector

• S. Avdasheva, P. Kryuchkova, A. Shastitko — Domination on the Market for Legal Research Systems: A Contribution to Economic Analysis
• S. Lukyanov, E. Tissen, N. Kislyak — The Market for Air Passenger Operations: Contestable Market or…?

• Afanasiev Mst. P., Krivogov I. V. Modernization of Public Finance: Teaching Aid
• Gregory P. Political Economy of Stalinism

• Industrial Policy: A Catalyst of Increasing Economic Growth in Russia? (The “Round Table” of All-Russia Business Uinion “Delovaya Rossiya” and the Association of Russian Economic Think Tanks. Moscow, June 26, 2007)

Abstracts

The article provides methodological analysis of applied economic knowledge and its relationships with theoretical knowledge. Stages in the history of these relationships are identified. The article considers in detail methodological ideas of J. S. Mill and J. N. Keynes (who proposed the "art of economics" as a part of economic science). The paper also analyzes epistemological features of applied economics. The author states that economic science was from the beginning tightly connected with practice. In the analysis of applied economics the author emphasizes the art of economics as the faculty to select and combine scientific knowledge to solve concrete problems. This specific field of knowledge, according to the author, should play an important role not only within modern academic discourse in Russia, but also within the system of higher education.

The article investigates the processes of capitalization and ideologization of economic science as preconditions of establishment and reproduction of expert knowledge. The author considers some basic problems of economic expert community functioning in Russia and its relationships with fundamental theoretical economic science, including as an example the technology of Foresight (based on the collection and analysis of expert judgments) which is very popular in contemporary forecasting research in Russia.

Despite the main attention being given within the economic activity to the issues of efficiency and competitiveness, one shouldn’t oversee the ethical aspects of business and economic policy. Quite important are also the matters of truth and false in economic research. Several phenomena and processes — subsidies, dumping, weapons trading, fiscal system and policy — do have also their moral dimension, not just the economic one. Hence, the issues of ethics should be considered and discussed in a wider context. From this perspective there is still a lot to be done, especially in the countries with weak market institutions and relatively lower quality of market culture, including post-socialist countries in transition to market system.

The article reveals the influence of the spiritual and moral atmosphere in the society on economic development. The emphasis is put especially on the role of social confidence and social justice. The author indicates also some measures on improving the worsening moral situation in Russia.

The article analyzes the situation with attraction of foreign direct investments (FDI) into the Russian Federation. Sharply increased inflow of international financial resources into national economy has highlighted the problem of definitions, the reasons of this phenomenon and its economic contents. The article considers methodological aspects and economic essence of modern FDI. Special accent is made on the estimation of the situation with their attraction into Russia, FDI structure and effectiveness. The conclusions about basic directions of the increase of their effectiveness in the Russian economy are formulated.

The article describes new tendencies in capital outflow from Russia and for the first time attempts to study Russia’s parallel external economy which is forming as a result of quick development of Russian TNC. The author points out peculiarities of Russia’s external economy in comparison with other countries and assesses its influence on internal economy, foreign economic ties and foreign policy. On the basis of conducted analysis and foreign experience criteria for responsible state policy in respect to globalization of Russian business are formulated and measures on bringing together external and internal sectors of economy are proposed.

The article considers capital market as a uniform institutional segment of national economy which provides funds for real sector. Special attention is paid to resources of stock market — shared and debt financial instruments. The analysis of national and global capital markets contribution to financing the corporate sector is presented. The paper outlines real competition between banking system and stock market according to capital recipients’ standpoint. The interaction mechanisms between banking and stock market sectors for effective economic growth are described.

The article considers general characteristics of the market for digital legal research systems and contains a short overview of the economic theory of markets for software products. The authors briefly describe the results of their research based on the estimation of the competitive environment in the industry. The methodology used includes determination of product and geographical market borders, analysis of the market size and market players by considering qualitative and quantitative parameters. The conclusions should be taken into account for the analysis of competition and opportunities for dominating on the market for digital legal research systems as a market for software products.

Based on the results of the survey of Russian airline companies, the article analyzes the main barriers to entry in this industry. The authors show the existence of substantial structural, technologic and behavioral barriers to entry that raises doubts concerning the applicability of the contestable markets hypothesis to this type of markets. The empirical estimation of the height of the barriers to entry shows that experts regard administrative barriers as the most important for limiting competition. In some regions there is a unified structure of ownership or affiliation "airport-airlines company" and this accounts for high level of market concentration and artificial monopolies. The article shows the contradictory relationship between these kinds of ownership and public welfare. The authors also study the ways of transcending the barriers to entry and come to the conclusion (using econometric techniques) that the most efficient way to transcend them in the air passenger operations industry is franchising.