Academic Economists Research Articles

Prospects for the development of electronic commerce in Russia in the conditions of digital economy

E-commerce is a form of running business using information and communication technologies. E-commerce objects include not only traditional types of services and goods, but also informational ones. In general, the trends in e-commerce development in Russia can be regarded as positive. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic affects everything, including spending money and interaction of firms in the marketplace. Current trends indicate an acceleration in digitalization, both in the private and public sectors. Therefore, in the future, only the online seller will have success whose business will be digitized and optimized as much as possible. At the same time, the transition of firms and consumers to the electronic segment is associated with certain costs and risks. This aspect requires serious attention from both academic economists and authorities; competent, but not excessive, intervention is required. In this article, the authors reveal both the positive and negative aspects of running e-business from the point of view of sellers and buyers, and also offer their own views on the e-commerce market development in the context of mass digitalization accelerated due to the coronavirus crisis. Provided that the rate of Internet penetration in the regions remains at the same level, e-commerce in Russia will be able to maintain the current growth rate and realize its potential as an important trading platform for both domestic and foreign economic agents.

Evaluation Methods of Scientific Economic Journals Quality

The paper presents a review regarding the current methods of evaluating, ranking, and rating academic economics journals in Russia and other states – the USA, the EU countries and China. In order to do this, the authors introduce a common typology of analytical methods which includes bibliometric, peer review, network (invariant), hybrid, and consolidated algorithms for evaluating the quality of journals. The article shows that the differentiation of periodicals can be performed using quantitative and qualitative approaches. The authors explore the usage of so-called institutional filters, which are the rules for regulating the academic sphere via specialized tools for assessing the academic economics journals. The findings reveal that the trend established in the beginning of the 21st century concerning the application of international databases’ formal metrics in science policy hides a lot of threats. Among them status losses by some Russian academic economics journals maintaining high academic standards, which are not covered by international databases, as well as various consequences of manipulating practices and setting of obviously unrealistic targets can be named. The authors outline the conditions for the efficient usage of formal academic economics journals metrics as institutional filters. The paper proves that current analytical methods for evaluating the periodicals quality allow to carry out their reasonable and unbiased ranking for research needs of Russian economists.

How Economists Ignored the Spanish Flu Pandemic in 1918–1920

The current Covid-19 pandemic has attracted significant attention from epidemiologists and economists alike. This differs from the 1918–1920 Spanish influenza pandemic, when academic economists hardly paid attention to its economic features, despite its very high death toll. We examine the reasons for that by contrasting the ways epidemiologists and economists reacted to the Spanish flu at the time and shortly after the pandemic. We also explore, but less extensively, some economic and epidemiologic writings during the twenty-five years that followed.

A Summary of Research Hotspots in Educational Economics in China during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" Period

Since the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, Chinese scholars' research on academic economics has mainly focused on "winning the battle against poverty in education,” "developing modern vocational education,” "promoting educational structural reform," and "achieving the equalization of basic public education services." Analysis on themes such as "Humanization.”

Disarray at the headquarters: Economists and Central bankers tested by the subprime and the COVID recessions

Abstract The article explores the discussions among economic modelers and central banks research staff and decision makers, namely on the adequacy of unconventional monetary policy and fiscal expansionary measures after the subprime crisis and as the COVID recession is developing. First, the article investigates the arguments, models and policy proposals of several mainstream schools of economics that challenged the traditional Chicagoan orthodoxy based on Milton Friedman’s views, and developed the Lucas Critique, the New Classical synthesis and Real Business Cycle approach that replaced monetarism as the main rivals to old-time Keynesianism. Second, the transformation of Real Business Cycle models into Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models is mapped, as it extended the ideas of the iniquity of government intervention and unified academic and central bank research. Yet, a battery of criticism was levied against the DSGE models and, as the debate emerged over quantitative easing and other tools of unconventional monetary policy, the need for policy pragmatism shattered the previous consensus. The article then proceeds to discuss how the leading mainstream academic economists reacted to changes in central banks‘ practices, noticing a visible dissonance within Chicago-school and DSGE economists, as well as major contortions of central bankers in order to justify their new postures. The article concludes with a call for an extensive menu of fiscal, industrial and innovation policies in order to respond to recessions and structural crises.

Women in Academic Economics: Have We Made Progress?

This study uses data from Academic Analytics to examine gender differences in promotion to associate professor in economics. We found that women in economics were 15 percent less likely to be promoted to associate professor after controlling for cumulative publications, citations, grants, and grant dollars. In contrast, we found no significant gender differences in promotion in other fields including biomedical science, physical science, political science, mathematics and statistics, and engineering. We separated the sample by the research intensity of institutions and found suggestive evidence that these results were being driven by less research-intensive institutions.

The Evidence for Free Trade and Its Background Assumptions: How Well-Established Causal Generalisations Can Be Useless for Policy

ABSTRACT In this article, I offer a methodological analysis of the empirical research on the causal effects of trade liberalisation, and assess whether such studies can be of any use for guiding policy prescriptions in real-world economies. The analysis focuses on the mainstream economic research that has been used to support arguments in favour of trade liberalisation during the last decades. Even though there are empirical results that could be taken as valid evidence for a causal connection between free trade and economic gains, none of the existing evidence licences trustworthy inferences about the policy effectiveness of trade liberalisation reforms in real-world cases. There are three aspects of the empirical literature that make it highly problematic for making reliable policy inferences: (a) the criteria used to define the notion of ‘free trade’, (b) the background assumptions embedded in the econometric techniques used for estimating causal effects, and (c) the widespread desire among academic economists to attain scientific results in terms of universally valid generalisations. The analysis exposes a worrisome mismatch between, on the one hand, the research aims and outcomes of scientific economics and, on the other, the kind of evidence that would be useful for guiding actual policy deliberations.

Fifty shades of QE: Comparing findings of central bankers and academics

We compare the findings of central bank researchers and academic economists regarding the macroeconomic effects of quantitative easing (QE). We find that central bank papers find QE to be more effective than academic papers do. Central bank papers report larger effects of QE on output and inflation. They also report QE effects on output that are more significant, both statistically and economically, and they use more positive language in the abstract. Central bank researchers who report larger QE effects on output experience more favorable career outcomes. A survey of central banks reveals substantial involvement of bank management in research production.

Paradigms and policies: the state of economics in the German-speaking countries

This paper studies research interests, paradigmatic orientation and political involvement among roughly 700 full professors of economics at universities located in German-speaking countries. We collect biographical and institutional information on these professorships to derive indicators for research orientation, paradigmatic stance and political involvement. The main contribution of this paper is empirical; it documents the fairly homogeneous paradigmatic stance of German-speaking academic economics, analyzes the interplay between paradigmatic orientation and the policy process and contributes to a better understanding of the role of economic experts in German economic policymaking. Regarding the latter, we found that a highly asymmetric involvement of (under-represented) pluralist/heterodox perspectives relative to (over-represented) ordoliberal views in policy contexts is characteristic of economic policymaking in Germany.

How J M Keynes Could Have Ended the Eighteen Year Old F P Ramsey’s Academic Career Before It Started: On Keynes’s Easy, Possible Paragraph by Paragraph Intellectual Decimation, Obliteration and Annihilation of Ramsey’s Very, Very Poor Three Page Cambridge Magazine ’Article of Jan., 1922

J M Keynes could not respond to Ramsey’s 1922 Cambridge Magazine “article” because Keynes’s response would have required him to methodically show that every paragraph of Ramsey’s 3 page note didn’t make any sense at all due to the large numbers of errors of commission and omission. Ramsey not only didn’t get anything correct or right about Keynes's analysis in chapters I, II and III of the A Treatise on Probability. There is nothing contained in the three page review by Ramsey of the A Treatise on Probability that is correct. The real mystery is not Keynes’s so called mysterious non numerical probabilities, which are interval valued, imprecise probabilities. The real mystery is how literally thousands of academic economists and philosophers could have taken such a poorly written paper by an 18 year old teenager seriously for 100 years.

“MANY‐CITEDNESS”: CITATIONS MEASURE MORE THAN JUST SCIENTIFIC QUALITY

AbstractCitation counts are increasingly used to create rankings of scholars or institutions: while social scientists are often skeptical of the resulting indexes, economists have mostly been supporters of this approach. Yet, citation metrics have raised two debates in the literature: empirical, regarding their technical use, and theoretical, regarding their meaning and, more generally, the meaning of “scientific quality.” I review this literature highlighting the consequences for the use of citations for research assessment. As an application, I further study the network of citations of publications indexed in Web of Science, authored by all Italian academic economists between 2011 and 2015. I find that the probability of a citation between any two authors depends on similarity in their methods and topics but also, significantly, on various measures of social community and even of ideological proximity. The influence of social relations does not cancel out in the aggregate, as total citations to an individual depend on their network centrality. In the case of economics, citations cannot be interpreted as unbiased proxies of scientific quality.

A Description of Predatory Publishing in South African Economics Departments

AbstractPredatory publishers charge fees to authors for open access publishing but have limited peer review or other quality controls. In this paper, we use data from five of the most widely used predatory journals used by South African academics in Economic and Management sciences to show that predatory publications are widespread in Economics departments in South African universities. We also critique the Department of Higher Education and Training’s research publication subsidy system and highlight that several journals on the DHET accredited journal list, that South African academic economists publish in, are probable predatory journals. In improving the data on predatory publications in South African Economic and Management Sciences used by de Jager et al (2017), we show that approximately 50% of predatory publications by South African academic economists are authored by professors or associate professors, a finding which corroborates international evidence on predatory publications in Economics. Our paper is also a source of information on the quality of research produced by South African economics departments.

АЛЬТЕРНАТИВНІ КОНЦЕПЦІЇ ПОБУДОВИ ГРОШОВОЇ СИСТЕМИ У ПРАЦЯХ УЧЕНИХ-ЕКОНОМІСТІВ ХХ СТОЛIТТЯ

Після демонетизації золота у державах із ринковою економікою в основі функціонування грошової системи лежать кредитний характер емісії грошей і монополія на неї в центральних банках. Проте упродовж ХХ століття продовжували з’являлися альтернативні концепції побудови та функціонування грошової системи, автори яких висували свої пропозиції щодо оптимального облаштування грошового господарства у державі. Виокремлення основних напрямів, якими, на думку вчених-економістів, повинно здійснюватися реформування грошової сфери, — мета статті.
 Серед найвідоміших економічних шкіл найбільше уваги критиці чинного порядку та необхідності перебудови грошової системи присвятили неокласики. І. Фішер, Л. фон Мізес, М. Ротбард, Ф. фон Гаєк, Х. Уерта де Сото не тільки викривали негативні наслідки інфляції, послідовно доводили злочинний характер фідуціарної емісії, виявляли нелогічність існування банківської системи з частковим резервуванням, а й формулювали власні правила облаштування національних і міжнародних грошових систем. В основу їхніх проєктів покладено золоте забезпечення грошей, організація їхнього випуску на ринкових засадах аж до передання емісії у приватні руки та ліквідації центрального банку. У сучасних умовах це відобразилось у появі криптовалют із приватними емітентами, проте без матеріального забезпечення.
 Представник кейнсіанства Р. Гаррод пропонував замінити золотий стандарт на товарний. Прихильники теорії вільних грошей (С. Гезель і М. Кеннеді) ініціювали введення плати за володіння грошима, що повинно спонукати якнайшвидше їх витратити на придбання товарів чи кредитування. Вітчизяняний учений М. Тимофіїв, що творив на еміграції, розробив проєкт випуску грошових сертифікатів, забезпечених зерном, що зберігається на складах їхніх емітентів, — хліборобських банків, і переконував, що це ті гроші, які ніколи не втратять своєї вартості.
 Таким чином, найбільш популярними альтернативними сучасним концепціями побудови грошової системи є повернення до золотого або будь-якого іншого товарного забезпечення грошової одиниці та можливість емісії приватних грошей.

Institutionalizing neoclassical economics in Africa: Instruments, ideology and implications

Post-war development economics drew broadly from an array of different theoretical approaches, including theorizing from the south. Academic economists and policy makers in African countries openly and critically debated alternative possibilities from different theoretical traditions. As the multi-paradigmatic approach was under assault, the great development economist Albert Hirschman reminded us, in 1981, that this transcendence beyond monoeconomics arose out of the ‘unprecedented discredit of orthodox economics’ from within the economics establishment following the Great Depression and that the reassertion of neoclassical economics was somewhat predictable. The unevenness of the patterns of development provided the opening for the wholesale attack on development economics. Following the crisis of the universities in the 1980s, brought on to some degree by donors like the World Bank, economics departments on the African continent were reconstituted and reshaped in the image of the monoeconomics of the West. Capacity building efforts emphasized a single theoretical paradigm aimed in part at supporting structural adjustment policies. The African Economic Research Consortium, based in Nairobi and founded in 1988, played a key role in transforming the economics profession in Africa. The paper will map out the institutional dynamics and the consequences of reconstructing economic departments and government agencies in African countries.

The field: tasks, pasts, futures

ABSTRACT The paper sketches a story about how and why the field of economic methodology / philosophy of economics emerged (as a further step in specialization), and how it has evolved intellectually and institutionally. It considers the field as an institutionalized form of higher-order reflection on the discipline of economics and suggests that such reflection, also in its pre-field form, has recurring triggering conditions (e.g. alleged failures in economics, fundamental controversy, launch of new research style) and functions (e.g. criticism, defense, programmatic statement). It lists topics of inquiry that derive from the concerns economists and others have about the discipline (as a modelling discipline and a policy science). It offers consolation to those who worry about effectively addressing academic economists as the primary audience, suggesting there are other valuable audiences (such as philosophers of science and policy makers). It gives examples of how critical conversation will ensure progress in the field.

“If You Compete with Us, We Shan't Marry You” the (Mary Paley and) Alfred Marshall Lecture

Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall are often described as the first academic economist couple. Both studied at Cambridge University, where Paley became one of the first women to take the Tripos exam and the first female lecturer in economics, with Marshall’s encouragement. But in later life, Marshall opposed granting Cambridge degrees to women and their participation in academic economics. This paper recounts Alfred Marshall’s use of gender norms, born out of a separate spheres ideology, to promote and ingrain women’s exclusion in academic economics and beyond. We demonstrate the persistence of this ideology and resultant norms, drawing parallels between gendered inequities in labor market outcomes for Cambridge graduates in the UK post-Industrial Revolution and those apparent in cross-country data today. We argue that the persistence of the norms produced by separate spheres ideologies is likely to reflect, at least in part, the rents associated with preferential access to better paid, high-skilled labor market opportunities. In doing so, we ask who benefits from gender norms, who enforces them, and suggest relevant policy work and areas for future research.

Fifty Shades of QE: Comparing Findings of Central Bankers and Academics

We compare the findings of central bank researchers and academic economists regarding the macroeconomic effects of quantitative easing (QE). We find that central bank papers find QE to be more effective than academic papers do. Central bank papers report larger effects of QE on output and inflation. They also report QE effects on output that are more significant, both statistically and economically, and they use more positive language in the abstract. Central bank researchers who report larger QE effects on output experience more favorable career outcomes. A survey of central banks reveals substantial involvement of bank management in research production. JEL Classification: A11, E52, E58, G28

ОЦЕНКА ЭФФЕКТИВНОСТИ МАРКЕТИНГОВОЙ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТИ ТЕЛЕКОММУНИКАЦИОННЫХ КОМПАНИЙ

Marketing activity of telecommunication companies of the Republic of Tajikistan in conditions of market relations development taking into account factors influencing this process has been investigated. Ways to increase the competitiveness of services provided and trends in the development of types of services that contribute to the effective use of existing networks of telecommunications companies have been studied. The functions of marketing service in the direction of analysis of trends of development of telecommunication market, including analysis of demand for new types of competitive services, are considered. Analysis and evaluation of the marketing activity efficiency for the introduction of new types of services was carried out, taking into account the capacity of existing networks of telecommunications companies. The dynamics of tariff revenues characterizing the provision of communication services of the regional national telecom operator of the Republic of Tajikistan was analyzed. Positive dynamics of growth of tariff revenues of individual branches of the national telecom operator of the Republic of Tajikistan providing services to provide access to the Internet using ADSL technology was noted. Fundamental and additional tasks, as well as general functions of marketing activities of telecommunication companies in market economy are considered. A method of comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the marketing service of telecommunications companies has been proposed, which allows you to comprehensively evaluate marketing in three areas: financial results of marketing, organization of marketing, communication with consumers. This methodology is aimed at determining the results of the marketing service for each type of services provided separately, as a result of which it is possible to evaluate the costeffectiveness of providing a separate type of telecommunication services. We studied the work of other academic economists who studied marketing activities, as well as issues of assessing the effectiveness of services provided.

How Economists Ignored the Spanish Flu Pandemic in 1918–20

The current COVID-19 pandemic has attracted significant attention from epidemiologists and economists alike. This differs from the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza pandemic, when academic economists hardly paid attention to its economic features, despite its very high mortality toll. We examine the reasons for that, by contrasting the ways epidemiologists and economists reacted to the Spanish Flu at the time and retrospectively within the next 25 years or so.

Women in Academic Economics: Have We Made Progress?

Women in Academic Economics: Have We Made Progress?