• M. Golovnin — Theoretical Approaches to Monetary Policy Implementation in the Globalized Economy

• R. Kapelyushnikov — Productivity and Labor Compensation in Russia: How to Cope with Statistical Illusions
• B. Zamaraev — Features of Formation of Primary Incomes in the Russian Economy
• N. Vishnevskaya, O. Kulikov — Wage-setting in Russia: The Role of Industry level Tariff Agreements

• I. Denisova, M. Kartseva — Re-training Programs — the Remedy for the Russian Labor Market?

• Ya. Volkov — Pension Reform Modeling and Implicit Pension Debt Evaluation
• T. Chubarova — Health Сare System in Russia: Economic Issues of Theory and Practice

• B. Lavrovsky — On the Nature of Current Crisis
• I. Ul'yanov — Companies' Profits and Debts

Abstracts

The article represents the adopted version of the report prepared by the experts of the Institute of Contemporary Development in January 2009. It is based on the authors’ views on the development of the current crisis in Russia and possible scenarios of the government economic policy. Also the recommendations about anti-crisis methods and public dialog agenda setting are made in order to find the way out of the crisis and suggest possible directions of creating prospective post-crisis national economy.

The article reveals global crisis causes; measures for establishing universal financial and economical system regulation are formulated. Anti-recessionary regulation objectives should pursue the formation of sound economy, not overburdened with debts and fictitious capital. While creating a new financial architecture financial leverage limitation for all enterprises in financial and real sectors of the economy is considered to be the key innovation. Flexible anti-cyclical system of prudential regulation, compensating destructive influence of positive feedbacks on financial markets, is needed. It is also necessary to improve the quality of corporate and public governance, to forbid combining activities which cause an unsolvable conflict of interests. For currency risks reduction it is suggested that SDRs should be wider used as an international instrument of payments and a reserve currency.

The paper analyzes the main theoretical conceptions and forms of monetary policy implementation in the modern world. Mundell—Fleming model is viewed as the basic one, besides changes in underlying monetary policy conditions in the context of financial globalization are considered, including world inflation dynamics during the “Great Moderation” and factors behind it, the choice of exchange rate regime, the condition of the international monetary system, monetary policy transmission mechanism, theories on financial market development, and rising propensity to financial crises in national economies. Special attention is paid to those theoretical positions that can be used for the analysis of current Russian monetary policy.

The paper provides a thorough critique of conventional wisdom that in the Russian economy of the 2000s labor compensation has been increasing much faster than productivity. It reveals a number of wrong implicit assumptions that lead to this statistical illusion. The most important of them are: 1) substitution of producer real wage for consumer real wage; 2) using data on wages instead of data on total labor compensation. Relying upon both official statistics and findings of business surveys the paper concludes that in fact 2004—2007 were a period of sharp decrease rather than of sharp increase in real unit labor cost.

The article is devoted to compensation estimation as one of primary incomes in GDP. Regularities and features of compensation formation in the Russian economy in the 2000s are considered. GDP structures by kinds of primary incomes in Russia and in the countries of Euro zone are compared. The results of research confirm that the parameters (numerical characteristics) of incomes formation structures in Russia and in European countries do not differ significantly.

In Russia, the wage setting mechanism is still under transformation. The paper analyzes the role of industry-level tariff agreements in wage setting process. It examines the procedure of industry-wide negotiations, main institutional characteristics of the agreements concluded by social partners, the interrelations of industry-level agreements, on the one hand, with the upper level agreements (on federal and regional levels) and with company-level bargaining, on the other hand. The peculiarities of wage setting on the industry level and the enforcement of agreements reached between employer organizations and trade unions are also studied. The analysis of economic consequences of Russian system of wage determination is presented.

The paper analyzes re-training programs provided by public employment offices in Russia with the stress on their potential role during economic crisis. Net impacts of the programs are estimated using a rigorous quasi-experimental evaluation technique. The study is based on follow-up surveys in two Russian regions. Propensity score approach is utilized to estimate overall and group treatment effects. It turns out that the impact of re-training programs in the Russian regions is statistically insignificant both for wages and for employment. There is no positive overall effect found for the programs that is in contradiction with the perception of the employment officers. There is no overall negative effect as well that is against the view of some experts. The overall effect comprises positive and negative group effects.

The paper reviews major foundations of pension schemes, their classification, prerequisites and reasons for pension reforms. Also the issue of pension reform modeling and analysis of financial consequences of pension scheme restructuring from the government budget point of view are considered. Special attention is paid to the implicit pension debt as the toolbox for estimating future obligations of the government. Main principles of implicit pension debt estimation and short review of its implementation practice are discussed.

The article discusses current issues in health economics, such as investment in health and economic development, specific characteristics of medical services, state regulation and mixed economy in health care. The author puts emphasis on the potential of budget medicine and the principles of economic efficiency and social equity in the context of health care reforms in Russia.