Sign in
Generative AI has become an important factor influencing employees’ incomes in Russia, with the AI wage premium averaging 13%. The maximum benefit goes to those who already have high incomes and high skills, which may contribute to the expansion of the wage gap.
Macroeconomic forecasts often assume shock-induced unemployment is temporary and that employment and output recover. However, the reality may be far more complicated. The loss of skills and the mismatch that arises when workers switch industries may stall a recovery for years.
The science of economics is not mere knowledge of the world but a way of knowing it. This is why fictional worlds may be legitimate areas of research which are sometimes more convenient than the real world.
In Russia, around a third of the employed face a significant risk of being potentially affected by AI in their daily work. However, full automation, owing to the shift of all functions from humans to AI, threatens less than 1% of jobs.
Financial crises are associated with ‘black swans’, i.e. sudden market crashes. However, if a crisis is viewed as a peak-to-recovery period, the ‘swans’ become ‘turkeys’: routine and protracted events. They are almost unnoticeable but systemically chip away at investors’ wealth.
Unlike conventional finance, where profit is derived from interest on loans, Islamic finance works on a different logic: income only arises from real assets and shared risk. Over the past half-century, Islamic finance has grown into a global industry spanning 140 countries.
The price differential between new builds and resale properties in Russia is driven by factors beyond macroeconomic conditions. What also matters is the housing market structure including the level of competition among developers and banks, and subsidised mortgage programmes.
The digital economy is transforming the classic factors of production Adam Smith described in The Wealth of Nations – the treatise that laid the foundation of economics. Two and a half centuries later, Smith’s ideas remain relevant, but new realities demand that we rethink them.
Russia has seen a twofold rise in the average standard of living over the past 20 years. However, the share of food in household spending has shown paradoxical trends: in defiance of economic theory and global practice, it has changed little, if at all.
Consumer behaviour long remained on the periphery of both economic and sociological theory. The social sciences had to undergo several ‘turns’ before consumption was recognised as an independent economic and social force in its own right.
People often make unnecessary purchases or end up paying more than they can afford to, contrary to their economic benefit. Such consumption is called non-standard, and is observed, at least occasionally, in almost half of Russian adults.
The rational expectations hypothesis was the gold standard in macroeconomics for many years. It assumes that people take a realistic view of the future. In fact, people often attach too much importance to short-term trends, which may directly impact a central bank’s policy.
People often intuitively perceive economics as a zero-sum game, where one person’s gain automatically means another person’s loss. These naïve economic beliefs distort decision-making processes and become a handy tool for political manipulation.
The price of gold is shaped by a combination of fundamental and political factors. We examine the key forces that form it and explain, why the Fed’s decisions has taken the back seat, how central banks and the AI boom influence the market, and why low-grade gold ore prevails?
The abandonment of the US dollar as the dominant currency in the near future is highly unlikely. However, geopolitics, coupled with modern financial technologies, may become a driver of the transition to a new equilibrium, with regional currencies becoming dominant.
Migrants make a substantial contribution to the economy of the Russian capital, accounting for over 20% of its GRP. Up to two-thirds comes from residents of other Russian regions. The significant role of internal migration is what sets Moscow apart from many other global cities.
The degree of monetary tightening for a sustainable disinflation depends not only on the inflation rate, but also on the conditions that have led to its rise. There are three reasons why considerable monetary tightness might need to be maintained even when inflation decelerates.
More and more people around the world are getting news from social media. For regulators, this is an opportunity to receive feedback in real time. In our study, we show this by building an index that reflects how Telegram users channels perceive the Bank of Russia’s decisions.
Industrial policy is recovering all over the world. Our analysis of more than 6,500 regulatory acts across nations evidenced that advanced economies support high-tech mastered sectors, while emerging markets – the introduction of simpler technologies, which are new to them.
Human capital and its key component – education – are strongly linked to economic growth. However, high levels of education do not guarantee economic growth if a weak institutional environment hinders efficient application of knowledge and skills.
Although the real estate market is a separate sector, it is characterised by what is called ‘macro-criticality’. This means that the effects of changes in the market extend beyond it and may have an impact on macroeconomic stability in general.
Suboptimal and erroneous financial decisions people make often stem from cognitive biases. Their effect can be mitigated by impacting two key aspects – people’s behaviour and the decision-making environment.
The impact of population ageing on inflation remains contentious, as researchers’ opinions differ as to whether ageing has a deflationary or proinflationary effect. Our work uses data from the Russian regions to show that an elderly population has a proinflationary effect.
Unlike in other countries, inflation expectations in Russia are unresponsive to low inflation data of previous years, an experiment has found. This makes it imperative to ensure sustainably low inflation and prove that price stability is achievable.
An import reduction has a more than proportionate impact on Russia’s industrial output and exports. Over one year, a 1% decrease in imports as a share of production costs across industries leads to a more than 2% output reduction and an even more significant decline in exports.
Central banks have a system for announcing the future path of monetary policy: forward guidance. It contributes to the reducing uncertainty in the economy and decreasing market volatility and helps economic agents adjust to expected changes in advance.
In the last decades, economists have created a number of indices of central bank transparency. However, all of them target a professional audience. We have built a new index to cover regulator efforts to communicate with a broader audience.
Stock market capitalisation plays a significant role in creating wealth for the population, and often draws the attention of financial authorities. But what drives capitalisation growth and what is its ‘optimal’ size? Some of the answers can be found in economic science.
The Russian market is assimilating key green financial instruments: bonds, corporate lending, and mortgages. However, there are other forms of sustainable finance that could also potentially take root in the market.
Modern technology and big data on retail sales enable more accurate and faster measurement of inflation. We are developing a methodology for calculating a price index based on data from online receipts: in the future, it will make it possible to track inflation in near real time.
Human capital is one of the key factors of economic growth, but there are few quantitative estimates of its contribution to the Russian economy. New estimates show that its contribution peaked in the second half of the 2000s and had almost disappeared by the end of the 2010s.
In a geographically large economy, different regions can respond differently to the same events. Nowcasting used for data across Russia revealed these differences as well as their dependence on the level of development and the sectoral specialisation of the regions.
