• E. Fedorova, Yu. Barikhina — Assessing Horizontal and Vertical Spillover Effects from Foreign Direct Investment in Russia
• V. Buvaltseva, V. Chechin — Development of the Investor Institution in Russia as a Basic Participant of Securities Market
• V. Zubov, V. Inozemtsev — Surrogate Investment System

• A. Knobel — Eurasian Economic Union: Prospects and Challenges for Development

• A. Dubyansky — G. Knapp’s State Theory of Money: History and Current Perspectives
• A. Maltsev — History of Economic Thought, Quo vadis?

• N. Makasheva — Macroeconomic Reconciliation? (On the book by I. Ananiashvili and V. Papava "Laffer-Keynesian Synthesis and Macroeconomic Equilibrium")

Abstracts

The authors estimate the short-term and long-term relationship GDP—unemployment (employment). These are the first reliable and robust confirmations of Okun’s law validity for Russia. It has been shown that the reaction of unemployment to output decline is much stronger than the response to output growth of the same size. Cross-country comparisons give evidence that Okun’s coefficient for Russia is slightly inferior to the same indicator for most developed countries, but is similar to coefficients found for other emerging markets.

JEL: E24, C32.
Keywords: GDP, unemployment rate, employment, Okun’s law, Russia.

The significance of debt relations is constantly growing in the present-day world, so do economic problems related to debt. Credit relationships on market are usually treated as morally neutral despite the fact that debt generates a number of moral contradictions. This paper suggests an understanding of debt that draws on the anthropological theory of gift. It enables to expose the moral content of the utilitarian market exchange as compared to gift exchange and to differentiate between various forms of debt. This approach is used for analyzing consumer credit and for demonstrating that debtor’s behavior is paradoxically determined by striving to avoid the moral obligations of debt. The main moral imperatives are indicated that govern consumer credit — independence and necessity, calculativeness and quantification. This article demonstrates that making the borrower responsible for growing debt makes credit burden increasing rather than restraints it.

JEL: Z13, E51, A12, D14.
Keywords: debt; gift exchange; moral obligations; consumer credit.

FDI is believed to be very helpful for the national economy’s development. It is expected to increase the profitability and productivity of domestic companies. The analysis of balance sheets of Russian enterprises shows that for the period 2004—2012 foreign investment caused horizontal and vertical spillovers in economic sectors. But this impact is ambiguous. Econometric modeling establishes the significant positive role of backward spillover. This means that national suppliers gain benefits from international interaction and become more effective due to technological and knowledge inflow from abroad.

JEL: R11, R12.
Keywords: foreign investment, spillover effects, vertical effect, horizontal effect, input-output tables.

The article explains the concept of the investor as the main securities market participant. Depending on the goals and methods of investment the authors single out groups of investors. They conduct the analysis of each group of investors in the Russian securities market. On this basis the authors identify its main problems and suggest ways to address them.

JEL: G23.
Keywords: investor, securities market, financial instruments, investment resource, modernization.

The article addresses the crucial patterns of redistribution of earnings from effective businesses to ineffective ones, first of all to those closely affiliated with the federal government. The authors concentrate on analysing of what they call a "surrogate (Ersatz) investment system" build up in between the federal budget and big corporations and composed of financial institutions, specialized agencies, free economic zones, and some other elements. They argue that a deep understanding of surrogate investment system’s essence and features is one of the main prerequisites for advancement of the overall effectiveness of Russia’s national economy.

JEL: D52, E23, E44, E61, E62.
Keywords: investment process, surrogate investment process, budget, effectiveness, state corporations, privatization of financial flows, state capitalism.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of development prospects and problems of Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) of Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia. It considers integration problems inside EAEU, interactions of EAEU with other CIS countries and with countries from the rest of the world. The paper shows that the major integration challenge inside EAEU is the domination of the redistributive motive over the creative one. It estimates the value of the oil and gas transfer from Russia to other EAEU members and the influence of the Russian tax maneuver on this transfer. The paper shows the need in redistribution mechanism inside EAEU as a necessary condition for getting the potential positive economic effects of free trade with other countries. It also assesses the risks for EAEU due to Russian embargo for food imports from countries of the sanctions list and possible application of tariff in the trade with Ukraine.

JEL: C68, F15, F17, O13, P28.
Keywords: Customs Union, Eurasian Economic Union, free trade agreement, CGE model.

The paper considers the historical contexts of Georg Knapp’s nominalistic theory of money, and reconstructs its basic arguments. The contemporaneous critical reactions to Knapp are analyzed, as well as some more recent versions of chartalism, and the strengths and weaknesses of the chartalist insights in monetary theory and policy.

JEL: B15, B25, B3, B53, E40, E50, H5, N1.
Keywords: chartalism, state theory of money, nominalism, Austrian monetary theory, paper money, Knapp.

The paper demonstrates that economists lose interest in the study of the history of economic thought (HET). The roots that have affected the move of the HET to the periphery of the mainstream research preferences are analyzed. Based on a review of the current situation in the field of HET studies, the author shows that the field is gradually moving from the realm of the "pure" economics to converge with other humanities. The results of the survey of undergraduate and graduate students of the leading Russian universities confirm this trend. Saving HET in the economics curriculum requires deepening its integration with other social sciences.

JEL: B10, B40.
Keywords: history of economic thought, economic education, positivism, structure of current economics.

The authors of the book reviewed here suggest the model of the macroeconomic equilibrium that unifies Keynesian and Laffer’s approaches to analyzing the effects of taxation on the output and tax revenues. The authors demonstrated the limitations of the simple Laffer model and developed a more realistic extension of this model that captures the influence of taxes on economic growth and provided estimates for various countries.

JEL: E00, E62, E12, O23.
Keywords: Laffer curve, taxes, fiscal curve, aggregate demand, aggregate supply.