Research & Expertise news at HSE University

An international team of researchers, including Artem Baklanov, Research Fellow of the International Laboratory of Game Theory and Decision Making, HSE University, has proposed treating greenhouse gas emissions as financial debt in a new research article published in Nature. This approach could provide immediate economic incentives for enterprises to begin mitigating the harmful effects of their business activities.

How has higher education influenced the evolution of nations since the Second World War—and vice versa? Stanford professor Mitchell Stevens and Institute of Education researcher Ekaterina Shibanova have tried to answer this question in a special issue of the European Journal of Higher Education. They invited renowned historians, political experts, sociologists and economists to develop ‘a consensus on the role of higher education in political and social history after 1945.’ The special issue was created with input from researchers from Canada, Luxembourg, Russia, Germany, France, the UK, and Sweden.

Psychologists acknowledge that there is no longer any public consensus on gender relations and issues. The HSE Media Practices Centre held a training session on ‘How to Find Common Ground with People Living in the New Ethical Reality,’ in which experts discussed key elements of ‘new ethics’ and their influence on social relationships.

In Soviet times, relocation to northern monocities was seen as an attractive option, with high pay and good perks, along with a well-developed infrastructure, perceived as offsetting the harsh climate. The situation is different today, with some cities on the verge of vanishing into extinction. A prominent and rather striking example of this process is Vorkuta in the Komi Republic. A team of researchers from the HSE and Politecnico di Milano, having examined the progressive shrinkage of this once booming monocity, concluded that the case of Vorkuta could suggest effective approaches to managing urban depopulation in the Russian Arctic.

The UN member states pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 that are aimed at saving the planet’s resources and increasing overall well-being. One — Goal 7 — sets out to “ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.”

In its capacity as a venue for integrating Russian and international cross-cultural psychologists, the HSE Centre for Sociocultural Research has been researching the values of people in post-Soviet states and other countries for over a decade. Nadezhda Lebedeva, Director of the Centre and Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences, speaks about the leading world researchers working at the Centre, the transmission of values among adolescents and their psychological well-being, and the connection between creativity and the acceptance of cultural differences.

The stronger the functional brain connections, the less inclined someone is to punish others for unfair behaviour. This conclusion was reached by HSE researchers following a neuroimaging experiment. Their paper ‘Wired to punish? Electroencephalographic study of the resting-state neuronal oscillations underlying third-party punishment’ was published in the journal Neuroscience.

People with higher education enjoy higher salaries and are at considerably less risk of unemployment. The World Bank estimates that an extra year of university studies in Russia yields an 8% return on investment. The quality of a university, the specific field of study, and students’ individual strategies are all key factors in ensuring success in the labour market. These topics were discussed by Viktor Rudakov, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Head of the International Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University, in an open lecture on ‘How and Where to Study to Become Successful in the Labour Market’.