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on Confederation of Independent States |
| By: | Berezinets, Irina (St. Petersburg State University); Ilina, Yulia (St. Petersburg State University); Muravyev, Alexander (IZA) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether and how various characteristics of CEOs and corporate boards are related to the severity of corporate governance problems within firms. The latter is proxied by private benefits of control, which we measure for dual class stock firms using the voting premium approach. Our empirical analysis is based on data from Russia and takes advantage of the extreme corporate governance problems in the country, considerable variation in corporate governance practices across firms and over time, and presence of a large and exogenously created (during the process of privatization) group of dual class stock companies. The data are assembled from the RTS, SKRIN and SPARK databases and include over 200 firms observed in 1997-2009, with over 1000 observations in total. Our econometric analysis suggests a quadratic relationship between private benefits of control and CEO ownership with a minimum at about 4% CEO ownership, a positive association between CEO tenure and private benefits, and a quadratic in CEO age with a dip in private benefits at about 52 years of age. There is also a quadratic relationship between private benefits of control and board size, implying the optimality of medium-sized (about 9-10 directors) boards. We find no gender effects on private benefits of control. |
| Keywords: | CEO, corporate board, private benefits of control, dual-class stock firms, Russia |
| JEL: | G34 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6256&r=cis |
| By: | Mikhailova, Tatiana |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the extent of distortions in Russia's spatial economy that are inherited from the Soviet system. Using Canada as a benchmark for spatial dynamics of economic activity in a market economy, I construct the spatial allocation of population that would result in Russia, given its initial conditions and existing regional endowments, in the absence of Soviet location policy. The results show that Siberia and the Far East were overpopulated by about 14.5 million people by the end of the Soviet period. Overdevelopment of Siberia comes at the expense of the European area of the country. This discrepancy persists, even after adjusting the simulated counterfactual allocation for WWII. |
| Keywords: | Russia; USSR; Siberia; economic geography; Soviet location policy |
| JEL: | P5 R1 |
| Date: | 2012–01–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35938&r=cis |
| By: | Bazhanov, Andrei |
| Abstract: | The studies of the International Monetary Fund offer a model for recommending sustainable budget policy to oil-exporting countries including Russia. The model does not contain any resource as a factor of production and assumes that Russian oil reserves will be exhausted by the middle of the 21st century. The current paper examines the sustainability of open and closed models, which are calibrated on Russia's data and include a resource as a factor of production. The open-model case shows that monotonic economic growth is impossible given the current state of the Russian economy. This paper offers an approach for estimating changes that improve long-term sustainability. |
| Keywords: | nonrenewable resource; weak sustainability; open imperfect economy; Russian oil extraction |
| JEL: | Q32 Q38 O13 |
| Date: | 2011–12–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35870&r=cis |