Research & Expertise news at HSE University

In 2016, the Higher School of Economics will be the first Russian university to become an associate member of a large project being carried out by the Freie Universität Berlin’s Dahlem Humanities Center. The project, entitled the Thematic Network Principles of Cultural Dynamics, aims to strengthen international cooperation in humanities research. Its objective is to study the factors that affect the cultural processes in the history of humanity’s development.  

In Russia, the demand for migrant workers is highest in economically developed and resource-extracting regions, in areas with low population density, and in construction and industrial companies. Employers prefer to hire low-skilled migrants with no education beyond secondary school and limited work experience of less than a year, since these workers are much cheaper than locals. These are some of the findings from a study by Elena Vakulenko, Assiant Professor at the Department of Applied Economics, HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, and HSE student Roman Leukhin.

What should Russia’s policy be on Science and Technology? What do Russian and international foresight research results show? How is international cooperation in science developing? These are among the questions which will be discussed at the 5th annual international research conference on Foresight and STI Policy at HSE on 18th - 20th November.   

On November 6 and 7 ICEF and the International Laboratory of Financial Economics (LFE) held the Fourth International Moscow Finance Conference. Christian Julliard, Academic Director of LFE, has talked to HSE News Service about the conference and about the education of future economists at the International College of Economics and Finance.

The level of education has a direct impact on young Russians’ chances of getting a job. Young men and women with some post-secondary education – in particular those with higher education – experience a shorter transition to their first employment and a fairly low risk of staying unemployed, while those with just nine year of compulsory secondary school – in fact, 20% of Russians under 29 – are likely to remain unemployed for prolonged periods, according to Elena Varshavskaya, professor of the HSE Department of Human Resources Management.

On November 6, the first module of the University Consortium began at Columbia University (New York). The Consortium was formed this autumn by Columbia, Harvard, the Free University of Berlin, Oxford, the Higher School of Economics, and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Students and faculty from the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs represent HSE in the project.

On November 10, the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 was presented in Paris. The report analyzes trends in R&D in different regions and countries. The chapter of the report devoted to Russian was prepared by HSE researchers Leonid Gokhberg and Tatiana Kuznetsova.

In the near future, the number of migrants from Central Asia coming to work in Russia will increase – particularly from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, countries where remittances from their citizens working in Russia stand at almost half of their respective GDPs, according to a joint study by the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the HSE Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), and the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS).