• S. Sementsov, A. Murzina, A. Gorban, O. Turigina — Engine of the Russian Economy
• A. Yakovlev — Overcoming Stereotypes

• K. Krinichansky — The Evolution of Associated Forms of Enterprises and the Genesis of the Share Institution
• H. Valiullin — Genesis of Currency Areas: Retrospective Analysis

• Rubinstein A. Ya. Economics of Public Preferences

• Financial Crisis and Its Consequences for the World Economy and Russia (The Round Tabe of the "Liberal Mission" Foundation. Moscow, October 17, 2008)

Abstracts

The article gives full treatment to monetary policy problems which are essential for the transition of the Russian economy to innovation-based development. The necessity for achieving all monetary policy objectives, instead of reducing them to inflation targeting, is justified. Systemic and structural approach to providing promotional monetary policy is suggested. The elaborated package of monetary policy tools allows ensuring higher efficiency of innovation-based economic development. Reasons for the relevance of the Central Bank of Russia discount rate decrease are given. Some general conclusions are drawn about new experience of governmental regulation under the conditions of the world financial crisis.

The financial crisis emerging nowadays demonstrates the real level of financial globalization. It would be strange if the Russian economy remained "safe haven" in the current environment. But could one blame the United States saying that the Russian crisis is induced only or it has own origins? It seems that the American crisis has been just a trigger while the Russian economy has its inner diseases. That’s why one cannot hope to maintain the existing model of economic growth while any attempts in this direction will aggravate the situation even more.

The article develops the integral approach to formulating and realizing modern monetary policy which is capable to replace the traditional one, characterized as fragmental and non-systematic. Global financial crisis has revealed the absence of sufficient instruments of monetary policy and led to transformation of central banking functions. Monetary authorities are now not just lenders of last resort, but actually sponsors of financial market of last resort. The efficiency of monetary policy in future must be formed by its integrity (interactions of its objects) and close connections with real economy as well.

Russian government has prepared the package of measures to help the country’s financial system maintain financial stability. The paper discusses the state measures and formulates the propositions of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP). The most important ones include coordination of regulators, unsecured refinancing and refinancing of external debts, guarantees of interbank loans, budget deposits in banks. The author analyzes subordinated loans for Russian banks from the state budget, nationalization of several banks and the future of government intervention in the stock market. Special attention is paid to the Deposit Insurance, the development of national credit rating system and the official information policy. The author believes that state measures need the following fine-tuning.

The paper discusses four dilemmas encountered by an economic theorist. The dilemma of absurd conclusions: should we abandon a model if it produces absurd conclusions or should we regard a model as a very limited set of assumptions that will inevitably fail in some contexts? The dilemma of responding to evidence: should our models be judged according to experimental results? The dilemma of modelless regularities: should models provide the hypothesis for testing or are they simply exercises in logic that have no use in identifying regularities? The dilemma of relevance: do economists have the right to offer advice or to make statements that are intended to influence the real world?

The article shows that a model is a representation of something beyond itself in the sense of being used as a representative of that something, and in prompting questions of resemblance between the model and that something. Models are substitute systems that are directly examined in order to indirectly acquire information about their target systems. An economic experiment is an arrangement seeking to isolate a fragment of the world by controlling for causally relevant things outside that fragment. It is suggested that many theoretical models are (‘thought’) experiments, and that many ordinary experiments are (‘material’) models. The major difference between the two is that the controls effecting the required isolation are based on material manipulations in one case, and on assumptions in the other.

In the article the perspective approach in philosophy of science — methodological institutionalism — is discussed which regards economic ideas as scientific and ideological institutions. This approach allows to apply tools of modern institutional theory to the history of economic thought. The evolutionary analysis of science should put an emphasis on studying status interests of scientists, local rationalities and informal hierarchies of scientific communities, informal norms and values, epistemological institutional «traps» and models of scientific cognition.

The article provides the view on rates of growth in different sectors of the Russian economy based on observations of dynamics of KPMG activity in Russia and statistics on mergers & acquisitions. The authors show the correlation between these indicators and suggest their own version of what is the underlying logic behind the development of a competitive sector in the Russian economy and the future growth of this sector. Special attention is paid to the approach used to assess its dynamics and trends, broken down by industry and region.

Using the data of SU—HSU enterprises surveys and internal statistics of KPMG company the paper provides a non-conventional view on three economic problems which have recently been in the center of expert discussions in Russia: competitiveness of firms, corruption in the government and level of taxation. The paper argues the necessity of pragmatic approach to economic phenomena, especially under conditions of high uncertainty caused by the increasing global financial crisis.

The article expounds and summarizes the main economic and institutional factors and prerequisites for the formation of business enterprises in Europe in the X—XVIII centuries. The author shows that the later form of associated enterprises — joint stock company — had been preceded at an earlier stage of genesis by other forms of enterprises, each of which brought about its own innovations in the development of the share institution. The existence of limited liability corporations cannot be regarded as a sufficient condition for the transformation of the share into a financial instrument and for the formation of capital market. Some of these conditions may be the appearance of new motivational factors of using shares and corporations based on them and the formation of specialized infrastructure supplement.

The article presents a retrospective analysis of modern currency areas’ historical prototypes that have existed since the Ancient times. The analysis allows reveal some objective reasons of those prototypes’ genesis and common features of their functioning. The results of research confirm that this evolution had primarily economic origins and reveal both the increasing complexity of currency unit and the enhancing territorial scale of currency areas.