Research & Expertise news at HSE University

This September, work was in full swing at HSE University’s Laboratory for Psychology of Social Inequality. The laboratory, which was established in spring 2021, is the first research centre in Russia devoted to researching perceptions of inequality in various fields. IQ.HSE spoke to Elena Agadullina, head of the laboratory, about the research projects underway at the lab, the psychological mechanisms that support and maintain inequality, and Russia-specific trends in the field.

Researchers of the Laboratory of Complex Systems Modeling and Control have proposed a missing component of the mechanism of self-organized criticality, which will enable the reproduction of power-law patterns observed in the real world. According to the researchers, this can be used to improve our understanding of the the processes leading to strong earthquakes, forest fires, financial market crashes, and a sudden synchronization of social networks. The results of the research were published in the Scientific Reports journal.

Students and researchers from HSE University and the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics have examined the widely known ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ game using methods from statistical physics. They used the mean-field concept, a common tool for studying the physics of many-particle systems, to describe human decision-making processes. Researchers suggest that this model may be helpful for understanding systems with many participants. The results of the study are published in the September issue of the Physics Review Research journal.

Women typically earn 18%-20% less than men do with the same education, profession and personal characteristics, researchers from the Higher School of Economics found using data from an employment survey of young personnel. What’s more, this income gap has a cumulative effect, growing wider the longer a woman works. Education, however, significantly compensates for this ‘penalty’. IQ.HSE examined this issue with the help of a study by Margarita Kiryushina and Victor Rudakova.

On October 5, HSE University’s International Advisory Committee held an online session. Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE University Academic Supervisor, introduced the new leadership structure of the University and Rector Nikita Anisimov spoke about his vision for HSE University’s development. Meeting participants discussed various aspects of the University strategy.

A competition of research centres looking to receive grants through the Artificial Intelligence federal project has concluded, and HSE University is among the winners. Winning centres will focus on developing new AI technologies that expand its application, overcoming existing limitations for solving applied problems and optimizing AI models.

Tatiana Mayskaya, a graduate of Moscow State University (MSU) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), began working at HSE University in 2017. She currently teaches courses at ICEF and FES and researches behavioural economics and information economics. In this interview, Ms Mayskaya explains how throwing darts can help in the choice of a PhD programme, how the ‘multi-armed bandit’ phenomenon is useful for business and why HSE is the ideal place to do research.

Participants of the HSE Economic Policy Club discussed why politics often serves the interests of a small group of people to the detriment of the welfare of the majority of citizens, and also why the government ignores recommendations from economists. At the same time, economic policy always redistributes resources, and it isn’t possible to achieve the optimal solutions suggested by economic theory.