Institutions, Elites and Collective Action

Institutions, Elites and Collective Action

A very interesting workshop took place in Moscow at the end of June, and as expected GRAPE was there. The workshop was jointly organized by a number of institutions, including the European Association of Comparative Economic Studies (EACES), the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Developments (ICSID) and the Higher School of Economics, which also hosted the event.

The program of the workshop focused on institutional and political economies, with several interesting papers. We recommend at least two of them for those passionate on the topic: (1) Arturas Rozenas “Persuasion and dissuasion with biased media: Evidence from Russian television in Ukraine”; (2) David Szakonyi “Firm-Level Returns from Connections to Elected Politicians: Evidence from Russia”; and (3) Edmund Malesky's work on corruption in Vietnam.

We presented at the conference our analysis of worker flows in transition economies. While we presented this work several times, it was the first time we had an audience so specialized in the analysis of transition countries, and that was reflected in the very useful comments and suggestions we received, in particular from David Szakonyi, our discussant. Additionally, Gimpelson, the Director of the Center for Labour market Sudies at HSE, asked for a copy of our paper to provide more detailed comments, that we wait anxiously.

Below you can find our presentation: