Research & Expertise news at HSE University

The prestigious National Award has been granted to Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Professor at the Paris School of Economics, and Evgeny Yakovlev, Professor and Director of the New Economic School Data Centre, for their paper ‘The Unequal Enforcement Of Liberalization: Evidence From Russia's Reform Of Business Regulation’. The National Award in Applied Economics is given once every two years for outstanding published papers that analyse the Russian economy at the country, industry, regional, or company level.

What happens in a person’s head when they hear speech or say something themselves? How does trauma and disease impact a person’s speech capabilities, and can we really help people who have certain medical conditions? Questions like these concern the life of language in the human brain, and this is exactly what researchers in the HSE Neurolinguistics Laboratory are currently studying.

Three years ago, HSE and Germany’s Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on issues concerning innovation and transition economics. Prof. Dr. Jutta Günther of the University of Bremen, who is heavily involved in the collaborative relationship, will be presenting at the XVII April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development at a panel on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy. She recently agreed to speak with the HSE news service about the progress in collaboration between the two universities, her research interests, and some of her favourite places to visit in Moscow.

On  April 19-22, 2016, the National Research University Higher School of Economics with a support of the World Bank organizes the XVII April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development. 

In Central Asia, subjective wellbeing and life satisfaction tend to be higher than objective wellbeing, and people in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan appear to be more content than Russians about their material circumstances and life in general. According to Tatiana Karabchuk, Deputy Head of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), and Daria Salnikova, Research Assistant of the same laboratory, relatively low levels of economic inequality in Central Asian countries may be one of the reasons for this paradox.

Prashant Loyalka is a visiting Leading Research Fellow at the HSE Institute for Education and the International Laboratory for Education Policy Analysis. His research article, ‘Does Shadow Education Help Students Prepare for College?’ will be published in the International Journal of Educational Development Vol 49, in July 2016. In an interview with HSE News Service, Dr Loyalka talked about his research into the advantages and shortcomings of shadow education and about why American parents send their kids to after-school Russian math class.

In many countries, including but not limited to Russia, frontier regions, populated more recently than the country's core territory, tend to lag behind in terms of socio-economic development. This phenomenon can be explained by legacies such as state formation in remote regions and the autonomy traditionally enjoyed by new settlers, according to Roberto Foa (Harvard University) and Anna Nemirovskaya, Senior Research Fellow of the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR).

On March 16, Apostolis Papakostas, Professor of Sociology at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden gave a presentation of his book ‘Civilizing the Public Sphere: Distrust, Trust and Corruption’ at the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research. Examining the interplay between distrust, trust and corruption, this book maps out the social mechanisms that make actors and organizations in the public sphere perform their activities in a civilized manner.