Publications

In this paper we describe a methodology that allows researchers to measure empirically, in the form of well-defined indicators, the extent to which economic analysis and evidence is been applied in the enforcement of competition law, using data collected from the decisions of competition authorities. By mapping the value of these indicators to different legal standards, our methodology also allows one to identify the legal standards adopted in the assessment of different conducts that were investigated by the authorities. The policy implications of empirical work in this area are potentially very important, since the extent to which economic analysis is applied in the assessment of anti-competitive conduct by competition authorities may well influence the quality of this assessment (i.e. the quality of enforcing competition law, measured by the extent to which decision-errors and deterrence effects are minimised). Empirical analysis using the indicators can be used to undertake comparative analysis in different countries, to examine the extent to which authorities favour specific legal standards in the assessment of specific conducts and the way in which the judicial review process treats decisions depending on the legal standard used.

This study explores examples of sustainable growth in Chinese and Russian natural gas companies. The topic of sustainable growth has become a priority focus for studies in market development. Company growth encounters many obstacles, and any such study necessitates a multivariate analysis of interrelated financial and non-financial factors. The authors aim to highlight two fundamental issues in this study. The first is the choice of those indicators which characterise company growth. The second is the identification of factors that have a sustainable impact on growth. Additionally, we try to answer the question: “Are the sustainable growth factors of Russian and Chinese gas market companies comparable?”. The primary purpose of this study is to analyse Chinese and Russian gas market companies’ financial growth strategies using the ‘Geniberg Z-matrix’, as well as enhanced Financial Sustainability Indicators System indices by identifying which indicators have a greater influence on the Sustainable Growth Rate. The scientific novelty of this study is related to the process of constructing financial reports with a focus on sustainable factors, and the implementation of a sustainable financial growth matrix to the appropriate information of Chinese and Russian oil and gas companies. Through this approach, a relationship between sustainable growth and energy companies’ financial strategy was confirmed. Chinese and Russian gas companies’ financial growth strategy was analysed by employing the Geniberg-Z matrix as well as enhanced Financial Sustainability Indicators System indices. We found that ROCE, WACC, ROL, and CGDummy influence Chinese gas companies’ sustainable growth rate and recommended the implementation of an FSIS calculation. In the same way, ROCE, ROFA, CR, DOL, ROL influence Russian gas companies’ sustainable growth rate, and we recommend an FSIS calculation. Evaluation results also show that Chinese and Russian gas companies are financially attractive and have stable results, but could improve their financial strategies from a sustainable growth perspective.

The article is devoted to the calculation of the dynamic hedge ratio based on three different types of volatility models, among which S-BEKK GARCH model takes into account cross-sectional dependence. The hedging strategy is built for eight stock-futures pairs on energy market in Russia.

We contribute to the debate on the optimal structure of Competition Authorities (CAs), a debate of particular relevance in younger developing country jurisdictions. We propose a model of a reputation-maximizing CA in which reputation is increasing with enforcement success. This predicts that generalist CAs will focus on decisions in activities with low probability of annulment and low investigation and litigation costs and that this could be detrimental to welfare (relative to the more balanced activity portfolio of specialist CAs). We use a data set of appealed decisions of the Russian CA to provide an empirical support for the model’s assumptions and predictions.

Over the past ten years, an ambiguous situation concerning Russian gas companies has been observed. On the one hand, companies’ reports represent conservative policies and sustainable growth in the coming years. On the other hand, companies’ fi nancial performance suggests another situation because of the insuffi cient level of fi nancial indices that refl ect the inconsistency of existing sustainable growth approaches. This situation indicates the relevance of the research concerning Russian gas companies’ fi nancial sustainable growth in the conditions of the global economy, “economic sanctions” and investment policy implementation. The primary purpose of the research is to analyse Russian gas companies’ fi nancial growth strategy employing Geniberg Z — matrix as well as enhanced fi nancial sustainability indicators system indices by identifying which indicators have a greater infl uence on sustainable growth rate. We found that return on fi xed assets ratio, net profi t growth ratio, debt equity ratio infl uence on Russian gas companies’ sustainable growth rate and recommended for the system of fi nancial sustainability indicators (FSIS) usage. We associate the concept of Russian gas companies’ fi nancial sustainable growth with environmental protection, energy savings, and social factors. Thus, we added to the fi nancial model non-fi nancial factors. As a result of the analysis, we have obtained the dependence of Sustainable Growth Rate to Environmental Ratings as well as Return on social responsibility costs. We recommend paying more attention to the energy, social, environmental, and economic determinants that could contribute to sustainable growth. We also found that Russian gas market companies could improve Financial Strategies according to sustainable growth point of view. We suggest ways to enhance the fi nancial strategy of Russian gas companies.

This article provides evidence about the influence of performance measurement criteria on the choice of enforcement targets by law enforcement authorities, utilizing a rich dataset of decisions by the Russian competition authority in the period 2008–2015. The authors provide a comparative analysis of performance measurement by several competition authorities throughout the world. Then a hypothesis is tested suggesting that a competition authority, motivated by the criterion of “enforcement success,” tends to select relatively easy implemented enforcement targets, which lead to decisions with relatively low probability of being annulled if appealed. This is so, even though other enforcement targets would generate superior welfare effects. Thus, our analysis indicates that putting undue emphasis on “enforcement success” as a performance criterion may not lead to desirable welfare outcomes.

Despite the fact that judicial review is an important part of competition law enforcement under the administrative system, in which courts decide on claims to annul infringement decisions made by competition authorities, its role in the development of evidentiary standards of economic analysis is understudied. This paper attempts to fill this gap by analyzing the impact of judicial review on the application of market analysis in competition investigations by the Russian competition authority during 2008–2015. Although the guidelines for the assessment of competition are mandatory for many types of anticompetitive conducts and they require application of the Hypothetical Monopolist Test to delineate antitrust market, competition authority does not always do that. We test hypotheses on the impact of legal requirements, experience of application, and the outcomes of the judicial review on the probability to present either an informal market analysis or market delineation using the Hypothetical Monopolist Test in a particular decision. We find that positive outcomes of the judicial review of infringement decisions significantly increase the probability of undertaking a particular analysis in future investigations. The pressure of judicial review under the presence of mandatory standards of evidence is an important determinant of the development of evidentiary standards in competition law.

We estimate the effect of the Russian University excellence program (Project 5-100) initiated by the Government in 2013 on research performance of top Russian universities which received, on a competitive basis, substantial financial support within this program. To do so we use an econometric analysis of longitudinal data applying a linear growth model with mixed effects, with different characteristics of research output as dependent variables. We demonstrate that there is a significant positive effect of Project 5-100 which appeared from the very first years of its implementation – that is, the universities receiving financial support demonstrate a substantial, steady increase in publications both measured in total numbers and per capita when compared to universities from the control group. An analysis of the structure of publication output allows us to demonstrate that not only quantitative but also qualitative growth has taken place, although the impact of Project 5-100 on quality is heterogeneous across universities and disciplines. Finally, we examine to what extent the change in the structure of research output may be attributed to changes in research collaboration patterns.

Advance price announcements in the form of general rate increase (GRIs) by liner shipping companies have recently become the subject of investigations by competition authorities in different jurisdictions, including the European Union and Russia. The main goal of this paper is to answer the question whether GRIs predict price changes of competitors. Comparison of GRIs with actual price changes in particular routes, defined as antitrust markets in competition investigations in Russia, shows a limited anti-competitive effect of advance price announcements, albeit under specific market conditions. Regression analysis, undertaken in the context of the Russian investigation, rejects the hypothesis that the GRI of a particular company would be followed by price increases of its competitors. Moreover, the frequent changes in the market shares of liner companies support the hypothesis of competition vis à vis collusion. Remedies applied by competition authorities address content and timing of GRIs. The theory of tacit collusion suggests that remedies, which further specify the content of price announcements, may paradoxically enhance non-cooperative pricing, in contrast to remedies that restrict audience of GRIs by customers.

In this study, we investigated how scientific collaboration represented by co-authorship is related to citation indicators of a scientist. We use co-authorship network to explore the structure of scientific collaboration. For network construction, the profiles of scientists from various countries and scientific fields in Google Scholar were used. We ran the count data regression model for a sample of more than 30 thousand authors with the first citation after 2007 to analyze the correlation between co-authorship network parameters of scientists and their citation characteristics. We identify that there is a positive correlation between citation of scientist and number of his co-authors, between citation and the author’s closeness centrality, and between scholar’s citation and the average citation of his co-authors. Also, we reveal that h-index and i10-index are correlated significantly with the number of co-authors and average citation of co-authors. Based on these results, we can conclude that scientists who maintain more contacts and more active than others have better bibliometric indicators on an average.

Difficulties of competition policy at the global level are widely debated by academics and policy-makers. However, recent discussions do not pay enough attention to those instruments of antitrust enforcement that target local companies in domestic markets. This type of antitrust price remedies becomes popular in Russian competition law enforcement towards large exporters that dominate in home markets. In this article we explain the circumstances under which antitrust price remedies imposed by national competition authorities on one exporter in a determined country may limit competition in global commodity markets. In particular, antitrust price remedies, which impose the cap on domestic prices using export or global prices of the commodity as a benchmark, increase the sustainability of collusion, either explicit or tacit. Being primarily designed to support domestic buyers, antitrust price remedies may also increase domestic welfare by facilitating collusion abroad and creating additional profits for large national producers.

In this paper we are going to review both theoretical studies in the field of intellectual capital measurement and empirical research, devoted to analyses of intellectual capital influence on companies’ value and financial performance. As a result, potential areas for further investigations in this field were revealed.

Considering groups of intellectual capital measurement methods, we identified that direct intellectual capital methods and scorecard methods are the most appropriate for the purpose of IC components measurement. To obtain objective results of measurement it seems reasonable to develop system of proxy indicators for all intellectual capital components (human, structural and relational capitals) and subcomponents (process and innovation, client and network capitals). Basing on existing literature, we make an attempt to identify and systemize indicators, associated with intellectual capital and reveal that network capital metrics remain under-researched and deserve closer examination. It was also found that investigators should develop the system of intellectual capital indicators, taking into account industry specificity.

 As for empirical studies, in order to investigate the influence of intellectual capital on corporate value and financial performance, it seems reasonable to elaborate models, which include factors, associated with all intellectual capital components and subcomponents and, what is just as important, their interrelations. Furthermore, it is vital to investigate the relationships between the values of IC components for companies. The models should be adopted for both developed and developing countries. It is also important to analyze the influence of intellectual capital in various industries separately, taking into consideration phase of economic cycle.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Workshop on Enterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation, EOMAS 2018, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in June 2018. The main focus of EOMAS is on the role, importance, and application of modeling and simulation within the extended organizational and enterprise context. The 11 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 22 submissions. They were organized in topical sections on conceptual modeling, enterprise engineering, and formal methods.

In this article an estimation of marginal effects of competence levels on non-material component of graduates’ job satisfaction is presented. The importance of non-material factors of job satisfaction is outlined. As an indicator of job-satisfaction binary variable based on graduates’ self-esteem is used. The research is focused on the process off employability and job performance seen from graduates’ point of view. The authors used logit-models to determine the effects and to measure the influence of competence levels on job satisfaction of university graduates and estimate its dynamics for the period of 2014-2016yy. The Data of questionnaire of graduates of the Higher School of Economics Nizhny Novgorod including totally 310 observations was analyzed. As a result, groups of competences with positive and negative marginal effects was formed for bachelors and masters. Authors conducted the comparison of these groups.  Also, the competences playing stimulating role for job performance were described as well as destimulating ones. Consequently, the results allow to see in what direction university should adjust its competence-based learning process to meet future requirements of labor market and to improve graduates’ job satisfaction and as a result – their job outcomes. Finally, the results of the research can be used in creating studying plans and programs of university subjects.

The radiation of microwave sources above sunspots at a frequency of 17 GHz gives information about the parameters of solar plasma in the regions where the magnetic-field strength is B ∼ 2000 G in the transition region between the chromosphere and corona. Short-period oscillations (with a period of severalminutes) of microwave emission from solar active regions (ARs) reflect wave processes in magnetic flux tubes of sunspots. Short-period oscillations of microwave emission from AR NOAA 12242 before two flares on December 17, 2014 are analyzed. This analysis is based on solar radio images obtained by means of the Nobeyama Radio Heliograph with a 10"−15" two-dimensional spatial resolution. The radio maps of the whole solar disk were synthesized in a nonstandard mode with a cadence of 10 s and an averaging time of 10 s. An increase in the power of about ten-minute oscillations of microwave radiation approximately 40 to 50 min before the M1.5 flare (01 : 00 UT) is found. On the same day, an increase in the power of ten-minute oscillations is observed about 60 min before the M8.7 flare (04 : 42 UT). This effect is similar to the effect found earlier by two groups of authors independently for three-minute oscillations—namely, they observed a sharp increase in three-minute oscillations 15 to 20 min before the radio burst accompanying the flare. The effect in question may be interpreted as an relationship ofMHD waves propagating along the magnetic flux tube of a sunspot and the onset of the solar flare.

The formation and properties of locally tensile strained Ge microstructures (“microbridges”) based on Ge layers grown on silicon substrates are investigated. The elastic-strain distribution in suspended Ge microbridges is analyzed theoretically. This analysis indicates that, in order to attain the maximum tensile strain within a microbridge, the accumulation of strain in all corners of the fabricated microstructure has to be minimized. Measurements of the local strain using Raman scattering show significant enhancement of the tensile strain from 0.2–0.25% in the initial Ge film to ~2.4% in the Ge microbridges. A considerable increase in the luminescence intensity and significant modification of its spectrum in the regions of maximum tensile strain in Ge microbridges and in their vicinity as compared to weakly strained regions of the initial Ge film is demonstrated by microphotoluminescence spectroscopy.

Homophily - tendency for people to form social connections with similar others - is one of the key topics in social network analysis. It indicates to what extent people tend to be similar to their friends and in what dimensions. For the long time homophily was just an index of the social similarity, but for the recent years the interest for the homophily formation, dynamics and multidimensionality increased. In this paper we investigate the homophily in such social constructed behavior as food consumption and academic achievements. The study of body mass index in social network context reveals the presence of homophily, which means that persons with similar constitution are more likely to be interconnected with each other. Interestingly, that healthy food consumption has no impact on social network formation, but there is homophily based on fast food consumption. Thus, ‘bad habits’ are stronger forces for the social ties formation. This results show that social constructed behavior is an important component on the process of social network formation.

The paper considers a two-sector two-country trade model of monopolistic competition featuring the heterogeneity of consumer preferences and incomes within and across countries. The incorporation of heterogeneity into a monopolistic competition setting is achieved by assuming a nested Cobb–Douglas and CES utility function exhibiting both country and sector-specific consumer tastes and expenditure shares on manufacturing and traditional goods. The key question analyzed in the paper is how consumer heterogeneity affects the home bias of trade in different countries. The key finding here is that the heterogeneity in tastes and incomes of consumers can provide a substantial influence on degree of home bias in trade but only in combination with high transportation costs

This research aims to use an architectural approach to create an alignment of IT and business in a chosen industrial enterprise, based on Zachman model. All development processes, existing within the enterprise, their relations and interactions, which are needed to fulfill the enterprise mission, are represented in a chosen Enterprise Architecture framework. The framework does not just perform the main attributes and components of the organization, but it also provides the company with an opportunity to understand and analyze crucial weaknesses and inconsistencies that needed to be identified and rectified. Nowadays enterprises use a wide range of established Enterprise Architecture frameworks, some of which were developed for specific fields, while others can be applied broadly. One of the frameworks with such functionality is the Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework, a unique tool to create an architectural description and apply solutions for overcoming challenges that have been identified for a considered enterprise. So, the main goal of the study is to provide a practical guidance, which enables the alignment between business and IT, based on the Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework.

A specific type of artifacts (named as “p2p”), that originate due to displacement of the image of a moving object along the digital (pixel) matrix of receiver are analyzed in detail. The criteria of appearance and the influence of these artifacts on the study of long-term oscillations of sunspots are deduced. The obtained criteria suggest us methods for reduction or even elimination of these artifacts. It is shown that the use of integral parameters can be very effective against the “p2p” artifact distortions. The simultaneous observations of sunspot magnetic field and ultraviolet intensity of the umbra have given the same periods for the long-term oscillations. In this way the real physical nature of the oscillatory process, which is independent of the artifacts have been confirmed again. A number of examples considered here confirm the dependence between the periods of main mode of the sunspot magnetic field long-term oscillations and its strength. The dependence was derived earlier from both the observations and the theoretical model of the shallow sunspot. The anti-phase behavior of time variations of sunspot umbra area and magnetic field of the sunspot demonstrates that the umbra of sunspot moves in long-term oscillations as a whole: all its points oscillate with the same phase.

Stabilizing monetary policy in a small open economy is constrained by the open economy trilemma. In this paper we investigate whether foreign exchange market interventions and the Central Bank’s credit rationing at the official rate (CROR) may soften this constraint and improve the results of monetary policy for different monetary regimes. We construct a DSGE model appropriate for analysing the forward-looking behaviour of households facing non-zero probabilities of losing access to financial market and CROR.

We have found significant credit rationing in the quarterly Russian data of 2001:Q1–2014:Q2. The probability of losing access to financial market and the probability of CROR are estimated as 22% and 66%, respectively. Using Russian data of 2001:Q1–2014:Q2 we demonstrate that CROR provoked forward-looking activity in financial market, which led to more Ruble devaluation in the crises of 2008-2009. It improved poor countercyclical performance of two Russian monetary policy rules, whereas made small effect on welfare. Welfare maximization exercises reveal a trade off between low-inflation and high-welfare solutions and favour of a floating exchange rate regime. We found the optimal value of the probability of CROR in both exchange rate-based and Taylor rule-based models but resulting improvement in welfare is very small.