Research & Expertise

Traditional Family is in Revival

The Russian family has been becoming more demographically heterogeneous over recent years. Some of the families follow the trend of having many children: women more often give birth to a third and fourth child, and the gap between births is decreasing, which makes the evolution of the family faster. At the same time, younger generations are inclined to postpone marriage and having their first child, which leads either to later motherhood or to childlessness. This means that two opposite trends are developing; along with the growing share of ‘Western-type’ families, with postponed parenthood and fewer children, there is a revival of the traditional family with more children, Sergey Zakharov, Deputy Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, reported.

It’s More Useful to Compare Students from Different Regions of a Single Country than from Different Countries

Professor Martin Carnoy of Stanford University and visiting professor at the Higher School of Economics, and Tatiana Khavenson, Research Fellow at the HSE Institute of Education, were among the authors of the report ‘An Analysis of the Impact of Education Policies on Student Achievement in the United States’, which was recently presented in Washington, DC. The key provisions of this report are of use when it comes to analyzing the situation in Russian education.

Conference in Budapest

Conference in Budapest
On October 15-16, an international conference ‘Public Service Innovation and the Delivery of Effective Public Services’ was held in Budapest. The event was organized by the National University of Public Service (Hungary) and the University of Edinburgh (Great Britain). S. Osborne and R. Carmen, two  scholars renowned for their innovations in public administration, also took part in the event.  

New Book Examines Impact of Civil Society on Policy in BRICS Countries

On October 9, the Public Policy Department presented a new book entitled ‘Policy impact of civil society in BRICS countries: best practices influencing policy-making’, which was published by HSE with support from Oxfam under the EU funded project ‘Empowering CSO Networks in an Unequal Multi-Polar World’.

One year of Science and Technology Studies fieldwork in HSE

Ian Lowrie, visiting PhD-student from Rice University spent last academic year at HSE doing anthropology of Russian Science & Technology. Ian research project has focused on elite efforts to restructure work and education in the Russian data sciences in order to build a more robust Russian information economy.

Alienation Leads to Endorsement of War

The lower a person's resilience, the greater their alienation from themself, other people, and society. In turn, self-alienation and a lack of personal relationships can cause one to approve of military action as a solution to international conflicts, according to Olga Gulevich, Associate Professor of the HSE School of Psychology, and Andrey Nevruyev, postgraduate student of the same department.

Children of Business Moguls Expect to Retire Early

Ambiguous attitudes held by the heirs of Russian moguls may affect the future of the country's big businesses. On one hand, the children of wealthy Russian business owners have an excellent headstart – they are well-educated and generally share their parents' values. Yet on the other hand, they are not likely to become selfless workaholics. Instead, they tend to be more hedonistic than their parents and less inclined to devote their entire life to building the family business. Most Russian business heirs expect to retire early and switch to hobbies, recreation and entertainment in their mid-life. Elena Rozhdestvenskaya, professor of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, is the first Russian researcher to study the mindsets of heirs of biggest Russian fortunes.

Art as a Research Tool

The First International Summer Workshop on Alternative Methods in Social Research, which took place from July 13th to 19th 2015, in Barcelona, was dedicated to hybrid methods of evaluation in the arts and life sciences. Anna Paukova, lecturer at the HSE School of Psychology (Department of Psychology of Personality) participated in the event.

Post-Soviet Authoritarian Regimes Ineffective

More than twenty years after the collapse of the socialist bloc, virtually none of the post-communist countries have attained the level of socioeconomic development characteristic of advanced democracies. Likewise, none of the post-communist countries have emerged as successful autocracies with high-quality public institutions, such as those found in Singapore or Oman. Professor Andrei Melville, Dean of the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences, and Mikhail Mironyuk, Associate Professor of the HSE School of Political Science, examine possible reasons why it is so.

Companies Supported by Government More Optimistic about Investment Climate

Over the past three years, the business climate in Russia has improved for companies with a long planning horizon and for those receiving government support. State-owned companies, however, have been worse off after losing their privileges and facing a level playing field, according to Andrei Yakovlev, director of the HSE Institute for Industrial and Market Studies, Irina Levina, research fellow at the same Institute, and Anastasia Kazun, postgraduate student at the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences.