Suchergebnisse

Using a spatial autoregressive model of cross-sectional and panel data, we study the determinants and dominant strategies of FDI inflows into Russia before and after the 1998 financial crisis. The important determinants of FDI inflows into Russian regions since transition began appear to be market size, the presence of large cities and sea ports, oil and gas availability, and political and legislative risks. Since 1998, it appears the importance of big cities, the Sakhalin region, oil and gas resources and legislation risk has increased, while the importance of political risk and port availability has decreased. Our results also reveal a shift from horizontal FDI strategy to a regional trade-platform FDI strategy. While theory anticipates combined vertical and horizontal motives for regional trade-platform strategies, the lack of evidence of a vertical motive in the Russian case suggests import substitution presently plays a significant role in regional trade-platform FDI. Using a multiple spatial lags approach, we show that neighbouring regions with ports have emerged post-crisis as competitors for FDI and identify agglomeration effects in FDI between adjacent regions with and without ports during the period 1999-2002.

This study uses theories on trust and opportunism to investigate the economic behaviour and business practices of enterprises in the Republic of Karelia, one of Russia's northern territories. Three enterprise types that have emerged during transition period in the Republic ("passives", "realists" and "innovators") have been identified on the basis of this analysis. Furthermore, both formal and informal market institutions in the Republic of Karelia were found to be underdeveloped, which creates numerous possibilities for opportunistic behaviour, both by authorities and by business actors. This, in turn, stimulates the creation of informal business networks and the use of particularly cautious business practices. The study is largely based on the results of a standardised survey and in-depth interviews conducted with the heads of 100 enterprises operating in the Republic of Karelia. The interviews were conducted in June and July of 2004 by the Institute of Economics research group in the Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This paper, examines the determinants of entrepreneurial interest and risk tolerance among Russian university students using the ordered logit model. The data for the paper was retrieved from a survey conducted in spring of 2008 involving 200 students from three St Petersburg-based universities. The paper produced three main findings. Firstly, the students were highly interested in pursuing entrepreneurial careers and had moderate risk tolerance. Secondly, the respondents with high entrepreneurial interest included males, students of business/economic specialties, students with family business backgrounds, students with experience of being self-employed, and those students who had favourable attitudes toward entrepreneurial behaviour, perceived social norms about entrepreneurship and higher entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Thirdly, the respondents who tended to have the lowest level of risk tolerance were females, students of technical specialties, students without entrepreneurial experience and students with lower entrepreneurial self-efficacy.

We examine the effects of subnational variations in corruption and democratization on the location decisions of foreign investors in Russian regions using firm-level panel data for the period 1996-2007. We link these effects to the level of corruption and type of political regime in the country of origin of a foreign investor. We find a relationship between attributes of foreign investors' home countries and attributes of the regions in which investment takes place: foreign investors from less corrupt and democratic countries tend to invest in less corrupt and more democratic Russian regions, whereas those from more corrupt and non-democratic countries tend to invest in more corrupt and less democratic regions. An inference is that, in Russian regions with high corruption and with autocratic government, foreign direct investment appears driven by the personal interests of controlling regional political elites who collaborate for mutual gain with foreign investors from corrupt and autocratic countries. Our results suggest a general conclusion that origin and location of foreign investment are linked by common political culture. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

AbstractWe provide large‐scale empirical evidence on the effects of multiple governmental regulatory and health policies, vaccination, population mobility, and COVID‐19‐related Twitter narratives on the spread of a new coronavirus infection. Using multiple‐level fixed effects panel data model with weekly data for 27 European Union countries in the period of March 2020–June 2021, we show that governmental response policies were effective both in reducing the number of COVID‐19 infection cases and deaths from it, particularly, in the countries with higher level of rule of law. Vaccination expectedly helped to decrease the number of virus cases. Reductions in population mobility in public places and workplaces were also powerful in fighting the pandemic. Next, we identify four core pandemic‐related Twitter narratives: governmental response policies, people's sad feelings during the pandemic, vaccination, and pandemic‐related international politics. We find that sad feelings' narrative helped to combat the virus spread in EU countries. Our findings also reveal that while in countries with high rule of law international politics' narrative helped to reduce the virus spread, in countries with low rule of law the effect was strictly the opposite. The latter finding suggests that trust in politicians played an important role in confronting the pandemic.