• B. Lavrovsky, G. Zhigul’sky, I. Murzov — Crisis and Tax Resourсes
• S. Kimel’man — Mining and Price Rent in the Modern Russian Economy

• A. Sarkisyants — Art Market and Its Investment Capacity
• L. Popova — State Regulation and Agricultural Pricing Policies in Russia
• V. Kryukov, V. Marshak — Evaluation of Parameters of Russian Oil-and-Gas Sector Development

• E. Vinokurov, A. Libman — Trends of Regional Integration on the Post Soviet Space: Results of Quantitative Analysis
• I. Gurova, M. Efremova — The CIS’s Regional Trade Potential
• Yu. Kindzersky — Deformation of Institution of Ownership in Ukraine and Problems of Effective Owner Formation in Inefficient State

• L. Grebnev — Factors and Resources: Identity, Difference, or Opposition?

• Congratulations to the Institute of Economics RAS with the 80th Anniversary

Abstracts

This comment on a paper by Ch. Bessy and O. Favereau ("Institutions and Economics of Conventions") discusses an interdisciplinary character of the theory of conventions and a potential fruitfulness of a dialogue between social sciences. In light of this dialogue, some particularities of the conventionalist use of a notion of "institution" are reviewed as well as the interpretation given by Bessy and Favereau to a relation between "institution" and "convention". Finally, a question is formulated concerning the consequences of the conventionalist analysis of institutions for social ontology and methodology of economic sciences.

"Institutions", as a set of pre-existing and objective resources of justification, is the milieu where economic agents can find materials to solve their coordination problems and/or their conflicts of reproduction. "Conventions" are collective representations of "justified common worlds" that activate institutions and legitimize arrangements within "organizations", whose joint production of goods and rules will lead to the renewal — or the degeneracy — of prior institutional milieu. The plurality of justification orders postulated in the model takes account of the empirical diversity of institutions. The institutional dynamics is studied through the operations which do/undo the possibility of building "common worlds" from "plurality". Competition, as for the space of prices, should be combined with сritic, as for the space of values (norms).

The article considers structural characteristics of tax payments in Russia, the effects of reducing the tax rate. In addition, there are some assessments concerning the dynamics of the process of overcoming the crisis and the corresponding role of some industries. Interrelationship of tax policy and technological modernization is also investigated.

The article considers the economic essence and stages of formation of potential, tangible and real mining rent and price rent in the modern raw materials sector of the Russian economy. It determines the role of each participant in the multistage process of rent incoming into government revenues. Actual tax system is analyzed from the point of view of mining and price rent withdrawing issues, recommendations for its modernization are developed. It is demonstrated that a huge massive of mining rent in Russia is formed objectively, but distributed subjectively without taking into account interests of the civil society.

The article investigates the world art market trends. It considers the main market indicators, comparative rate of return and the prospects of the market as well as the problems of art banking. Special attention is paid to the Russian art market.

The article provides an assessment of pricing policies in agriculture in Russia from 2007 to 2010. The author analyzes the strategy of protectionism in this sector and the impact of global trends on the background of the crisis. The article shows the influence of new federal laws concerning market pricing, first of all, the laws "On retail markets" and "On trade".

The article presents the results of evaluation of the parameters of the Russian oil-and-gas sector development from the view point of its sustainability under current changes of important internal and external conditions. Parameters evaluation is based on the national optimal model of the analysis and forecast of fiscal flows. As the calculations show the oil-and-gas sector has the potential to develop new projects exclusively on the basis of its own profit. But oil-and-gas production will be much lower than according to any pessimistic forecasts of the sector development. Thus, the approach oriented towards using companies’ internal financial resources does not allow to reach targets determined by the Energy Strategy of Russia.

The paper applies a new dataset of the System of Indicators of Eurasian Integration to evaluate the changes of level and direction of economic interaction of the post-Soviet states in the last decade. It analyzes the integration dynamics in the area of trade and migration as well as on three functional markets of agricultural goods, electricity and educational services. The paper concludes that the level of trade integration on the post-Soviet space continues declining, while there is a rapid increase of the labor market integration. Three largest countries of the Eurasian Economic Community — Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan — demonstrate positive integration dynamics, but small countries maintain the leading position in the area of post-Soviet integration.

The empirical study based on the concentration ratios, describing the trade intensity, and the gravity approach shows that under the 2001—2006 upturn, the realization of the CIS’s regional trade potential decreased significantly, despite the GDP growth and socio-economic developments. It indicates the weakness of the CIS’s integration process. Under modernization, the CIS markets are of great importance for Russia because they provide demand for Russia’s manufacturing goods and high-tech products.

The article analyzes changes in ownership relations in post-Soviet Ukraine from the point of view of their adequacy to the goals of the Ukrainian society and country’s economic system development. The author considers deformations in reforming the corresponding institution that impose restrictions on achieving desirable parameters of social and economic development and forming the effective owner. The attention is focused on the impossibility of overcoming deviations in ownership relations development without ousting structural, organizational and technological backwardness of the Ukrainian industry. Recommendations are given on further reforming ownership relations that are based on the idea of subordination of ownership institution’s separate components to the tasks of modernization of the country’s economic basis.

The article tries to distinguish theoretical notions of factors and resources in economics and to consider paired connections between factors (labor, capital, and land) and resources (information, energy, matter). The author traces the logic of transition from scarcity of direct reproducible material goods via limitations of non-reproducible indirect goods (energy resources) to limiting of individuals’ creative opportunities as a factor of survival of humanity.