Publications

This paper analyses the determinants and consequences of horizontal job-education mismatches, an increasingly relevant topic in debates about education and labour markets. This issue reflects the articulation of educational fields and occupations in the labour market. We evaluate the determinants of job-education mismatches and their impact on salaries of university graduates using comprehensive and representative national data for Russia. The study is based in graduates’ assessment and statistical analyses. We find that one-third of graduates in Russia work in a job that is not related to their field of study. Moreover, graduates from fields that either generate more general human capital (social sciences, business, law, services) or where low pay is common (agriculture) are more likely to be in that situation. On the contrary, graduates from fields that generate specific human capital (e.g.: medicine) are considerably more likely to be matched. We find that mismatches negatively affect the earnings of university graduates and the higher the degree of mismatch, the higher the penalty for the mismatch. The study depicts that mismatch is penalized in the majority of fields except for low-paid ones (e.g.: agriculture).

This paper analyses the impact of academic achievement on future salaries by looking into the grade point average (GPA)-earnings relationship for graduates of a leading Russian university. The study is based on pooled cross-sectional graduate survey data for 2014–2015. The issue of how student academic achievement impacts future labour market rewards is analysed through academic, demographic and labour market factors. We found that there is a significant positive impact of GPA on salaries of BA graduates (9–12% wage premium for an additional GPA point) and an insignificant or negative impact for MA programmes graduates. The study depicts that this negative effect can be partially explained by employment sector-specific variables. Among the main factors which positively affect earnings of graduates is work experience. Graduates who combined study and work achieve a 30% wage premium. However, there is no evidence that combining study and work affects student academic achievement, even for those who combined studies with full-time job. Despite the higher GPA of female students, male graduates’ earnings are 18% higher. Gender wage differences can be explained by gender distribution by the sector of employment: the over-representation of women in the low-paid education and science sectors and their under-representation in entrepreneurship and corporate sector.

Non-renewable fixed-term contracts are becoming more used instead of the traditional Russian model of open-ended employment. The authors examine the influence of institutional and organizational factors on the use of fixed-term contracts in Russia with data from a Sur-vey covering 3313 enterprises for the years 2009 to 2011. Probit and Tobit regressions are used to test several hypotheses about the use of fixed-term contracts derived from the litera-ture. The results indicate that state-owned and unionized enterprises are more likely to use fixed-term contracts; and a high level of perceived dismissal protection for permanent work-ers is positively associated with fixed-term contracts use. The incidence and intensity of fixed-term contracts are lower at enterprises with flexible wages. A significant impact of or-ganizational factors is confirmed for fixed-term contracts. Enterprises use less fixed-term contracts, if they have workers with tenure from 5 to 10 years and high job complexity.

Though foreign language is widely accepted as an important form of human capital and a factor of economic growth, the labour market outcomes for foreign language skills in developing economies remain understudied. This research explores the returns to different levels of foreign language skills in the Russian labour market and tries do disentangle the differences in return associated with job characteristics.

Based on a representative Russian survey data (RLMS-HSE) for 2008-2017, this study adopts several Mincer type models, adding controls for job characteristics, which are estimated using Ordinary Least Squares technique. By providing separate estimates for various professional groups, this research addresses the heterogeneity of returns which are associated with job characteristics.

The results indicate positive wage premium for foreign language skills in Russia which approximately equals to 9% when controlling for job-related characteristics. Moreover, wage premium for advanced level of knowledge reaches 24%. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the economic returns across age groups, levels of education, and occupations. The highest return to foreign language skills is obtained by managers and results to be 13%. For elementary occupations the estimate appears to be insignificant which proves that return to foreign language exists only for a limited number of specific jobs

The study is devoted to employment of recent vocational graduates. The pro­portion of middle-school graduates in vocational enrollment has increased es­sentially over the past decade, which indicates that the choice of vocational trajectories, on average, is now made at lower age. It was established based on the Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations that on average 44 percent of students combined work and study in 2010–2015. Vocational students mostly combine and work and study because of financial constraints, their study-work rarely being related to their major. Later on, when making a transition from education to the labor market, vocational graduates have to ac­cept one of the first job offers as they cannot afford a longer job search. The second part of the study draws upon the findings from the 2010–2015 sam­pling survey of graduate employment administered by the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat). It is shown that combining work and study has posi­tive effects on employability of graduates as well as on the size of their starting salaries. In addition, self-funded students and those who combine study with major-related work are more likely to get employed in their field of study af­ter graduation. Education-job mismatch among graduates is found to entail income “penalties”.

This paper examines the cultural employment in Russia and in the selected number of the EU countries in light of debates on the development of the creative economy in Russia. The data of the comprehensive monitoring of living conditions by Rosstat and the Eurostat cultural statistics are used to illustrate main differences in socio-demographic and occupational characteristics of cultural workers in these countries. The findings show that the characteristics of cultural workers vary dramatically over countries Russia and Europe. In particular, part-time and self-employment, as well as the existence of a second job, are not key features of Russian cultural workers. By contrary, individuals involved in the creative and cultural sphere in the EU are less likely to be in a full-time employment and more likely to be self-employed or part-timers than in Russia. Our results suggest that it is hardly possible to also indicate the impossibility of emulating the European experience in creative and cultural industries without serious structural changes in the sphere of cultural employment in Russia.

This paper evaluates the design of current contractual incentive mechanisms in Russian universities depending on the type of higher education institution after recent significant contractual reforms in the national academic sector. We employ the theoretical framework of incentive contracts in order to identify and assess performance measures of university faculty determining the total income received from teaching, research and administrative duties. We estimate returns from academic productivity in Russia to be reflected in the academic salary by an evaluation of empirical models of the determinants of faculty pay depending on their productivity, current academic and administrative position, gender and seniority. We show that for the entire sample, faculty salary is positively associated with publication activity. Teaching is significant only for the entire sample, but not significant for subsamples. Administrative duties (expressed in the position held) are positively related to faculty pay: the largest effect is for rectors and vice-rectors, but for deans and heads of departments or laboratories the effect is also strong. Heads of universities and structural units receive a significant bonus for their administrative position. For research-oriented universities the largest effect in publication activity is for the number of papers in high ranking journals. In universities with no research status we discovered a significant gender gap: the male faculty earn more than their female colleagues. There is a positive linear relationship between salary and seniority for the entire sample and in universities with no special status, which corresponds to human capital theory. Salaries in universities requiring higher entrance exam scores are higher than in less selective higher education institutions. The salary in Moscow universities is higher than in the regional higher education institutions.

Physical activity is considered today as a leading factor in health and well-being in developed countries. With decreasing levels of alcohol and tobacco consumption, widespread sedentary lifestyles have taken centre stage among the predictors of non-communicable diseases. That is why Russia, along with other countries, has adopted the “Physical activity strategy for the WHO European Region 2016–2025”. Young people are among the target groups of public policy promoting physical activity. This paper investigates physical activity among young people aged 15 to 24 years. The empirical study is based on a descriptive and econometric analysis of micro-data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS), 2000–2016. The research shows that 50% of young men and 65% of young women do not exercise on a regular basis. Both for men and for women, the probability of physical activity is positively related to their educational level, household income, and residence in capital cities. Negative relations were found between the probability of physical activity and smoking, status of married person, and employed and non-employed status. The results for alcohol consumption, body mass index and self-assessed health are inconclusive for this age group. The results confirm the necessity of better-targeted public policy motivating physical activity in youth. Overall, policy measures motivating young people to take part in physical activity will have a long-term effect. Habits developed in youth often persist into adulthood. The result will be a gain in the health and longevity of the Russian population.

Wage adjustments for employees are a reaction mechanism to changing market conditions and form a significant part of pay policy. Though various attempts to explore wage levels and wage differentials have been made, wage adjustment policies remain an understudied topic. This paper analyses the determinants of wage adjustments based on data from Russian enterprises 2015–17. The analysis is based on detailed data from an employer survey which covers more than 5,000 firms in both the public and private sector. The study adopts probit models to identify the reasons which determine wage revisions, depending on internal employer characteristics and external labour market conditions.  The results are in line with previous research on the topic (Bayo-Moriones et al., 2016) and suggest that both internal and external factors influence wage adjustments. A wage adjustment is a reflection of the ability to pay meaning that revisions are often made by successful firms with high employee turnover. Institutional frameworks, especially trade union activity, affects the firm’s decision to adjust wages despite the general opinion on the insignificance of unions in Russia. This study contributes to the limited literature by analysing the determinants of wage policies depending on the firm’s characteristics. This is the first study of its kind based on extensive Russian data. 

Nowadays tax incentives are widely used in many countries including Russia. Nevertheless, this tax instrument has a number of significant disadvantages. Firstly, they decrease budget revenues, and at the same time the efficiency of tax incentives usually is not estimated and seems to be not positive. Secondly, a lot of tax incentives can be replaced by more comfortable types of direct expenditures. Finally, as a rule, from an equity standpoint tax exemption is not a good, as recipients of tax exemption are usually wealthy people. This paper discusses main theoretical aspects of tax incentives (with focus on personal income taxation), provides a review of the world taxation practices and analyzes the tax exemptions in Russia. The results of analyses allow to outline the recommendations intended to improve the personal income taxation.

The article considers influence of entrepreneurial experience on the wageemployment wages. Empirical analysis is based on the RLMS-HSE panel data, 2000—2013, with using fixed effects models on the overall sample, five-year- and flexible window. Results show that transition from entrepreneurship to wageemployment leads to penalty of wages. Wage growth rate of former entrepreneurs’ lag behind the wage growth rate of workers without entrepreneurial experience. The size of wage-penalty decreases if the profession remains the same in transition from entrepreneurship to wage-employment.

In this paper, we explain why it is necessary to reform the pension system in Russia and, in particular, to increase the pension age. Moreover, we emphasize the positive consequences of such a reform, focus on potential risks and analyze measures for their prevention, as well as state counter-arguments to the most common objections. It is shown that due to demographic processes, the growth of informal employment and the reduction of average tenure, the number of pensioners is increasing while the population of donors of the pension system is declining. Under such conditions, the maintenance of the existing level of pensions will require significant additional costs. Raising the general retirement age as one of the measures for optimization of the pension system will help not only to maintain the level of pensions, but also to prevent the expansion of transfer payments from the federal budget and the increase of tax burden on the population and business. The reform will improve the situation on the labor market and stimulate the process of active longevity. It is also shown that the arguments against the increase of the retirement age are not well-founded. Several scenarios of the retirement age increase are considered, and the choice of the most favorable way for the Russian economy is made: up to 63 years for men and 60 years for women at the pace of 3 months per year in the first four years of the reform, then 6 months per year. The most crucial tasks which should be solved in order to maximize the social and economic output of the reform are also considered in the paper.

The paper examines issues connected with the implementation of MOOCs in teaching, motivation to study on these courses and the attitudes of the students and faculty towards the possible substitution of university courses for MOOCs. The study is also devoted to the evaluation of determinants in the demand for MOOCs among the students and faculty of Russian universities. The study is based on cross-sectional data from a student and university faculty survey carried out within the framework of the Monitoring of Education Markets and Organizations Project (2016). The results of the study indicate that MOOCs are demanded more by university faculty than by students. We found that faculty and student attitudes towards the substitution of general university courses for MOOCs is neutral, and negative regarding the substitution of special professional courses for MOOCs. Regression analysis revealed that students with higher academic achievement and faculty involved in research activities and participating in summer schools and vocational training are more likely to use MOOCs in their studies. Studying in a top university has a strong positive impact on the probability of student participation in MOOCs. However, the same effect for university faculty is ambiguous.