• A. Abramov, A. Radygin, M. Chernova — State-owned enterprises in the Russian market: Ownership structure and their role in the economy

Many challenges that have recently emerged in the world economy still exist. Moreover, new problems have appeared. Now we can see at the same time low economic growth in many countries, rising public debts, overheating of stock markets. The fact that alongside with negative interest rates financial resources are not in demand becomes more obvious. Major international banks meet rising problems again. In this environment government interference to support economic players and different markets is getting more pervasive.

JEL: E41, E44, E52, E58, F31, H62.
Keywords: financial markets, interest rates, foreign exchange, monetary policy, policy of central banks, national budget deficit, national budget surplus.

The paper considers measures on Russia’s integration into the global economy, aimed at the economic growth resumption. It analyzes conditions and mechanisms due to which the expanding trade and mutual investment with other countries contribute to economic growth in Russia. The paper provides policy recommendations for export support, regional economic integration agenda and the institutions reform.

JEL: F13, F15, F21, F41.
Keywords: international trade and investment, Eurasian Economic Union, free trade agreement, industrial policy.

The paper appraises current progress in establishing the Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Although the progress has slowed down after the initial rapid advancement, the Union is better viewed not as an exception from the general rules of regional economic integration but rather as one of the functioning customs unions with its successes and stumbling blocs. The paper reviews the state of Eurasian institutions, the establishment of the single market of goods and services, the situation with mutual trade and investment flows among the member states, the ongoing work on the liquidation/unification of non-tariff barriers, the problems of the efficient coordination of macroeconomic policies, progress towards establishing an EAEU network of free trade areas with partners around the world, the state of the common labor market, and the dynamics of public opinion on Eurasian integration in the five member states.

JEL: F13, F15, F36, F45, F53, F61, G38.
Keywords: Eurasian Economic Union, regional integration, customs union, common market, non-tariff barriers.

This article analyzes the ownership structure of companies with state participation and their role in the Russian economy. Using a sample of 114 largest companies we have estimated direct and indirect state participation as percentage of shareholdings which are in direct and indirect federal property in 2006—2014. We have used two methods for estimating the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which allowed us to compare our results with those of OECD and Rosstat statistics for the broader sample of Russian companies in the public sector. This article reveals the decline of SOEs’ share in the capitalization of the Russian stock market as well as a slight increase of their share in total revenue and employment. The results show that public SOEs, demonstrate significantly higher productivity compared to non-public SOEs and private companies have a distinct advantage in productivity compared with public SOEs. Despite the significant advantages in productivity of private companies over the SOEs, over 9-year period we observed a reduction of this gap. This may be due to the fact that in conditions of high financial volatility and stagnation of the economy SOEs had certain advantages in terms of access to sources of long-term funding and other forms of state support. However, SOEs with indirect state control had a rapid growth in revenue and productivity in comparison with the rest of them. This may indicate the presence of a specific stock selection mechanism for transferring more effective SOEs from direct state ownership to indirect control as an alternative to privatization.

JEL: B20, D20, D60, G38, H82, H83, K40, L30, P20.
Keywords: state ownership, state-owned enterprises, privatization, capitalization, private companies, direct ownership, indirect ownership.

This article overviews the existing possibilities of synthetizing New Keynesian optimization models with the research in behavioral economics. These approaches allow to build empirically adequate macroeconomic models and to expound this framework as a new research program, as a unification of traditional macroeconomic theory and behavioral economics.

JEL: E03, E12, E13, E17, E32, E44, E52.
Keywords: rational expectations, macroeconomics, behavioral economics, new neoclassical synthesis.

Today there are several common approaches to the study of addictive consumer choice. However, one of the existing approaches is often overlooked due to its complexity. This article aims to fill this gap. We start with a brief retrospective overview of the history of the issue and proceed by a detailed analysis of current research in the field of choice theory which takes into account the evolution of preferences over time in the presence of addiction. These preferences lead to deviation of a rational consumer from rationality under the influence of temptation, addiction, desire to have a greater choice etc.

JEL: D110.
Keywords: addiction, rationality, consumer choice, preferences.

The article compares the accuracy of point forecasts made with a structural dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model (DSGE) to those made with vector autoregressions estimated by OLS (VAR) and by Bayesian methods (BVAR). The main question addressed in the article is whether DSGE-based forecasts are as accurate as non-structural model ones. The comparison is made on the ground of mean squared forecast errors. The results show that the forecasting ability of the DSGE model is in general inferior to that of the BVAR. However, the difference is not critical. Moreover, for some variables and forecasting horizons, the DSGE model produces the forecast with the lowest error among all three models in question.

JEL: C11, C13, C53, E37.
Keyworlds: forecasting, VAR, BVAR, DSGE.

The article analyzes academician T. S. Khachaturov contribution to the development of economic theory and practice. We name the following areas of his pioneering research and applications: the basic theory of economic growth efficiency, investment efficiency, natural resource and environmental economics, transport economics.

JEL: B31, O10, Q5.
Keyworlds: economic growth efficiency, investment efficiency, environmental economics, transport economics.