The article discusses the practicability for privatizing some large Russian state-owned enterprises (SOEs) under sanctions. Privatization remains a significant trend in the economic policies of many countries, including Russia. The revenues from privatization demonstrate a steady upward trend worldwide. The effect of external sanctions which create significant difficulties in conducting privatization in Russia does not remove from the agenda the issue of privatization of large companies, but also makes it more relevant. Privatization is an effective tool for forming a competitive environment, increasing the efficiency of SOEs and reducing the presence of the state as a direct participant in market relations. The article contains not only theoretical arguments in favor of privatization, but also its relevance, especially considering the sectoral structure of the economy and the performance indicators of large SOEs. A particular feature of the research methodology is the evaluation of the performance of 29 large SOEs on the basis of a universal set of financial indicators. As a benchmark, we use the financial indicators of 144 Russian private companies and wide samples of foreign competitors for each SOE. The results show that the consolidated financial characteristics of SOEs tend to be inferior to those of private companies and foreign competitors. In addition, the total return, including dividend yield, on the state-owned enterprises’ equity is below the return of market benchmark with lowest risk.

JEL: B20, D20, D60, G38, H82, H83, K40, L30, P20.
Keywords: privatization, state ownership, state-owned enterprises, privatization program, sanctions.

The article presents the main results of the reform of the Russian electric power industry — the reorganization of RAO UES of Russia. Over the past 10 years since the reform, it has become clear that its main goals have been achieved. The monopoly branch, controlled by the state, has turned into a market one based on competition and private property. The necessary structural changes were made in the industry; a system of markets was created; large-scale investments were launched. All this led to a sharp increase in capacity inputs in Russia’s electric power industry. As a result of the reform, the price of electricity for the population, taking into account the PPP, that is, the real standard of living in Russia, and for the majority of industrial consumers is lower than in the leading foreign countries. It has become possible to improve the reliability of the power system and preserve its technological integrity. Proposals for further improvement of the Russian electric power industry are formulated.

JEL: L10, L12, L16, L22, L40, L52, L94.
Keywords: electric power industry, reform, UES of Russia, investments, competition, natural monopoly.

The article discusses the current relevance of Marx’s economic theory. It demonstrates the difficulties of the Marxian theory of value and the ambiguity of Marx’s own attitude towards this theory. The role of Marx and Marxism in the history of Russia is examined. Marx’s ideas about the connection between technology and social relations and his conception of historical development are critically analyzed in the context of modern economy and economic science.

JEL: B14, B31, O10, O30, P20.
Keywords: Marx, Marxism, Russian history, technology, inequality, theory of value, economic development.

The article gives a brief review of the prehistory of the appearance of "Mathematical Manuscripts" by K. Marx published in the USSR in 1968 as a separate volume not included in the second edition of Marx and Engels collected works. The conclusion is drawn that the study of the divisions of higher mathematics (primarily differential and integral calculi) by Marx was connected with his desire to turn to the works of representatives of the "mathematical school" (O. Cournot, J. H. Thunen, W. Jevons, L. Walras and etc.), which was actively developing since the 1860s, and to understand the possibilities of the mathematical language for studying economic processes. The role of "Mathematical Manuscripts" as a kind of "cover" of the movement for applying mathematical methods in economics that arose in the USSR in the 1960s is identified.

JEL: B13, B14, B16.
Keywords: Marxism, political economy, marginalism, history of economic thought.

The roundtable took place on May 18, 2018 within the International forum MARX—XXI in commemoration of Karl Marx 200th birth anniversary. The event gathered leading Russian economists representing Lomonosov Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, Financial University, Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. The participants of the roundtable assessed the role of Karl Marx’s heritage studies in the intellectual development of contemporary Russian economists, shared their personal experience in Karl Marx’s "Capital" studies during the special seminar at the economic faculty of Moscow State University, determined the most challenging problems of today, which were raised by Marx, and presented their recommendations on Karl Marx’s works studies in Russian universities.

JEL: A11, A20, B14.
Keywords: Karl Marx, Marxism, "Capital", economic education.

The development of the system paradigm in economic science leads to the formulation of a number of important questions to the political economy as one of the basic directions of economic theory. In this article, on the basis of system introspection, three questions are considered. The first is the relevance of the class approach to the structuring of the socio-economic space; the second is the feasibility of revising the notion of property in the modern world; the third is the validity of the notion of changing formations as the sequence of "slave-owning system — feudal system — capitalist system". It is shown that in modern society the system approach to the structuring of socio-economic space is more relevant than the class one. Today the classical notion of "property" does not reflect the diversity of production and economic relations in society and should be replaced by the notion of "system property", which provides a significant expansion of the concepts of "subject of property" and "object of property". The change of social formations along with the linear component has a more influential cyclic constituent and obeys the system-wide cyclic regularity that reflects the four-cycle sequence of the dominance of one of the subsystems of the macrosystem: project, object, environment and process.

JEL: B41, B51, O11.
Keywords: political economy, system paradigm, system introspection, system structure of society, property subject, property object, four-stroke cycle in the development of society.

The key methodological aspect of the monograph under discussion is the principle of consistency. The authors develop the logic of systemic interaction of four types of substances — environment, object, process and project, the unity of which they call a tetrad. That quadruple principle of consistency is applied to various socio-economic systems — from enterprises and their units to the global economy. At the same time, the authors reveal a certain cyclicity in the development of economic systems of any level associated with the alternation of four basic phases, each of which is associated with one of the four basic substances. The monograph also explores the principle of nesting economic systems into each other, characterizing the presence or absence of fractality, self-similarity. Although this self-similarity has a substantial basis, but decision-making is influenced by the inner structure of utility functions of agents at different levels, aggregation of which is an independent and very complex task. Special attention is paid to "dismanagement", i.e. decision-making based on the use of managerial dysfunctions. The authors advance the "animalistic" direction in the theory of a firm, trying to comprehend theoretically the category of the "soul of a company".

JEL: A19, Y3.
Keyworlds: systemic analysis, systemic paradigm, economic cycles, fractality.

The paper investigates the pricing behaviour of firms on the basis of a survey conducted by the Bank of Russia. The results show some price inertia factors which can be caused by inflation expectations adaptability, inflexible pricing policy and wage growth. These potential sources of price inertia can impede slowing down of inflation processes in the economy.

JEL: D22, D40, E30, L11.
Keyworlds: inflation inertia, inflation expectations, price flexibility, wage growth.

The author analyzes the women billionaire community in leading countries of the world in 2018. The global billionaire rankings were used as the empirical basis of the research. Such indicators of women billionaires as number, average age, self-made quality, territorial distribution, industry specifics and average number of children are considered. The paper deals with six types of business cultures dominating in different countries. These cultures differ in the chances for the women to join the business elite and perform their parental functions at the same time.

JEL: B54, J12, J16.
Keyworlds: business elite, billionaires, business women, gender analysis, business culture.