• J. Kornai - Honesty and Trust in the Light of the Post-Socialist Transition

• S. Avdasheva, A. Shastitko - Industrial and Competition Policy: The Issue of Interrelation and Lessons for Russia
• V. Novikov - The Influence of the Russian Antitrust Legislation on Economic Development

• S. Malakhov - Transaction Costs, Economic Growth and Labor Supply

• A. Pyzhikov - Administrative Reform in the Beginning of the 1960^s

• G. Rakitskaya - Undeclared Reform of Social and Labor Relations in the 1990^s
• I. Maslova, T. Baranenkova - Informal Employment in Russia
• Т. Ozernikova - Labor Enforcement in the Transitional Economy
• O. Kirichenko, P. Kudyukin - Legal Regulation at the Russian Labour Market

• D. Kokurin, G. Melkumov - Participants of the Global Oil Market
• K. Liuhto - Russian Oil: Production and Exports

• B. Mil'ner - Outcomes and Lessons (on the book by J. Stiglitz "Globaliza tion and Its Discontents")

• Gokhberg L.M. Statistics of Science

     In the first half of the 2002-2003 academic year, the members of a focus group at Collegium Budapest centred their research on examining the subject "Honesty and Trust in the Light of the Post-Socialist Transition". There were economists, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, legal scholars and philosophers in the group, some of them from the post-socialist region and others from elsewhere, conveying their experiences of honesty and trust in their respective countries. The research covered hundreds of phenomena and relations. The author of this paper confines himself to three problems: relations between firms; building a trustworthy state; the strategy for building trust.

     The article considers the question of interrelation between industrial and competition policy, especially in transition economies such as Russia. Both the possibilities of complementarity and trade-off are indicated. The authors show how the interplay between industrial and competition policy depends on the stage of economic development and how it has changed over few last decades. Some conclusions are drawn about the optimal use of industrial and competition policy in today's Russia considering the complexity of the objectives of economic policy.

     The antitrust legislation is traditionally considered as an attribute of free market economy and an incentive to increase public welfare. Critical analysis of the given theses is offered in the article. The author provides a number of theoretical, historical and practical arguments on the negative influence of antitrust legislation on economic development. In his opinion, antitrust measures liquidate competition, acting as a means of protection of non-competitive commodity producers. Under tariff regulation prices are usually established at higher level than under conditions of emulative competition.

     The paper presents the model of allocation of time within dispersion of current prices and under uncertainty of future prices. It is argued that, with a given wage rate and a chosen level of consumption, the individual maximizes savings as the function of time of search. As a result, when the wage rate is increased, the substitution effect is limited by higher prices of imperfect markets, and the income effect is limited by inferiority of consumption goods. The model discovers some differences of economic behavior of men and women. The level of development of an economy also changes the economic behavior, which in its turn contributes differently to economic growth.

     The ambitious reorganization of management of the Soviet economy during N. Khrushchev's years is analyzed in the article. Party and state organs have been reorganized according to industrial principle. However duplication of administrative functions, bureaucratization of authorities, internal resistance of the party bodies did not allow that reform to affect positively rates of economic development. The reorganization was one of the reasons of N. Khrushchev's displacement from the post of the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

     The factors that have formed the present state of social and labor relations in Russia are analysed in the article. Basic directions of social and structural (revolutionary) transformations, which are required and possible during the transition from the totalitarian state to democracy, are described. It is shown that real changes in social and labor relations and in the position of workers in today's Russia have become consequences of social and structural reforms and there is a gap between them and objective opportunities of democratic transformations. Prospects of social and labor relations together with feasible scenarios of the development of the Russian society as a whole are characterized.

     Methodological approaches to the definition of the notion "informal employment" and assessment of its size are proposed in the article. The factors that stimulate the growth of informal labor activity in post-Soviet Russia are analysed. Economic and social consequences of informal employment are considered and government policy measures in that field are grounded.

     Theoretical aspects of labor motivation forming in society are considered in the article. The accent is made on the analysis of enforcement as a specific type of labor stimuli and their impact on the person's motivation structure. Factors of enforced labor motivation are studied. The results of research that characterize the prevalence of enforced type of attitude to labor in the Russian transitional economy are presented.

     The labour legislation influence on the labour market situation is analysed in the article. The changes in legislation that took place in the transition period are considered as well as the Labour Code of the 2002. The authors show that the Russian labour legislation is characterized by excessive rigidity of the norms, which does not correspond with the current social and economic situation. The attempts to create high level of legal protection of the employees or their groups in many cases lead to worsening of their position at the labour market.

     The article deals with the leading participants of the global oil market and examines its basic parameters in 2002. The authors point out such demand-creating countries as the USA, the EU15 and the Asia Pacific, discuss their specifics as oil-consuming countries and their ability to influence the global oil market. The supply is provided by OPEC countries, US oil corporations and partly independent oil producers.

     Statistical data on reserves, production and exports of Russian oil are provided in the article. The author pays special attention to the expansion of opportunities of sea oil transportation by construction of new oil terminals in the North-West of the country and first of all the largest terminal in Murmansk. In his opinion, one of the main problems in this sphere is prevention of ecological accidents in the process of oil transportation through the Baltic sea ports.