Victor Polterovich

Tolerance of Cheating: An Analysis Across Countries

Abstract Cheating is a serious problem in many countries. The cheater gets higher marks than deserved, thus reducing the efficiency of a countrys educational system. In this study, the authors did not ask if and how often the student had cheated, but rather what the students opinion was about a cheating situation. They investigated whether attitudes differ among students in Russia, the Netherlands, Israel, and the United States and conclude that attitudes toward cheating differ considerably between these countries. They offer various explanations of this phenomenon. In addition, they find that the students attitude toward cheating depends on the students educational level (high school, undergraduate, postgraduate). Finally, they show that the data from the sample can be aggregated in a natural and elegant way, and they suggest a tolerance-of-cheating index for each country.

Accumulation of Foreign Exchange Reserves and Long Term Growth

Cross-country regressions, reported in this paper for 1960-99 period, seem to suggest that the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves (FER) contributes to economic growth of a developing economy by increasing both the investment/GDP ratio and capital productivity. We offer the following interpretation of these stylized facts: (1) FER accumulation causes real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation that is expansionary in the short run and may have long term effects, if such devaluations are carried out periodically and unexpectedly; (2) RER undervaluation allows to take full advantages of export externality and triggers export-led growth; (3) FER build up attracts foreign direct investment because it increases the credibility of the government of a recipient country and lowers the dollar price of real assets. A three-sector model of endogenous economic growth (including a consumer good sector, investment good sector and an export trade sector) is suggested to demonstrate how undervaluation may improve social welfare. Concepts of FER accumulation trajectories and equilibrium trajectories are introduced. It is demonstrated that small udervaluation of the equilibrium exchange rate may be wealth improving.

Resource Abundance, Political Corruption, and Instability of Democracy

In this paper we analyze data on sustainability of democratic regimes in resource rich countries and suggest a model to explain why resource abundance may lead to instability of democracy in some countries, but does not create any difficulties for a democratic system in other ones. Rate of resource rent tax is considered as the only policy instrument in our simple model. The tax affects the income of a representative voter. Choosing a tax rate, Autocrat competes with conventional Politician (a representative political party) for the office. Our model demonstrates the existence of a threshold for propensity to corruption (a measure of the institutional quality). The probability of the democracy preservation is decreasing in the amount of resources if the propensity is high and is independent of resources or even grows with the amount of resources if the propensity is low. It is shown also that Autocrat may use two types of policies depending on the qualities of governance (abilities to allocate tax revenues without big losses) that the public assigns to her and to Politician. More efficient Autocrat is inclined to follow populist high tax policy whereas lower Autocrat’s efficiency results in pro-Oligarch low tax policy when the country is resource abundant.

Resource abundance: A curse or blessing?

Is resource abundance a blessing or a curse? Typically, in resource rich countries, domestic fuel prices are lower, and energy intensity of GDP is higher. But they have higher investment in R&D and fixed capital stock, larger foreign exchange reserves and more inflows of FDI. They also have lower budget deficits and lower inflation. These are conducive for long term growth. We also find that in resource rich countries, real exchange rate is generally higher, accumulation of human capital is slower and institutions are worse, especially if they were not strong initially, which are detrimental for growth.

Innovation and Imitation at Various Stages of Development

A simple model of imitation and innovation is developed to explain a complicated picture of relative productivity growth in different countries. The model makes difference between global and local innovations and does not assume that a country always imitates the most advanced technology. It is shown that there are three types of stationary states, where only imitation, only innovation or a mixed policy prevails. We demonstrate how one can find the stationary states and check their stability for a broad class of imitation-innovation cost functions. Using World Bank statistical data for the period of 1980-1999, we reveal the dependence of innovation and imitation costs on GDP per capita measured in PPP and on an indicator of investment risk. An appropriate choice of two adjustment parameters of the model gives a possibility to generate trajectories of more than 80 countries and, for most of them, get qualitatively correct pictures of their movement. It turns out that three groups of countries behave differently, and there is a tendency to converge inside each group. Increase in institutional quality get countries out of underdevelopment traps, from the imitation area to a better steady state where local innovations and imitations are jointly used. All countries with high quality of institutions are moving toward the area where pure innovation policy prevails.

Democracy and Growth Reconsidered: Why Economic Performance of New Democracies is Not Encouraging

There are two innovations as compared to the previous literature on democratization and growth. First, not only the level of democracy is taken into account, but also changes in this level in the 1970s-1990s as measured by the political rights indices of the Freedom House. Second, the distinction is made between the rule of law and democracy, the rule of law being defined as the ability to ensure order based on legal rules; it is measured by the rule of law, investors’ risk and corruption indices. It is found that democratization in countries with strong rule of law (liberal democracies) stimulates economic growth, whereas in countries with poor rule of law (illiberal democracies) democratization undermines growth. In illiberal democracies institutions are weaker, shadow economy is larger and macroeconomic policy is less prudent.

Civic Culture and Economic Transition in Russia

In this paper we try to describe the main feature of Russian civic culture that could influence the outcome of the reform, initiated in 1992, and discuss channels through which the influence was realized. We begin with consideration of paternalism and what we call “habitual deviationism”, ordinary and routine deviation from official rules and laws. Both features were inherited from the Soviet period. Paternalism and habitual deviationism determine a system of people’s attitudes towards the state, the law, the property, and the liberal values. It will be demonstrated that this system entails an adversarial (using a Stiglitz’s term) style of governance and the opportunism and corruptibility of the ruling elite. It is argued that “shock therapy” may be destructive under this cultural environment and result in strong initial distortions since fast liberalization and privatization release a huge volume of rent and strengthen incentives for rent seeking activity. It is further argued that a good reform strategy should take civic culture into account and not put forward overly ambitious tasks. One has to build a sequence of interim institutions which would be more congruent to the initial cultural and institutional environment, facilitate the adaptation of the people, and stimulate modernization of cultural norms to reach an effective market system with time.

Innovation and Imitation at Various Stages of Development: A Model with Capital

A simple model of technological imitation and innovation is developed to explain club convergence in the evolution of the distribution of per-capita GDP over countries. Two versions of the model are studied and compared. The first one includes only innovation-imitation tradeoff, and the second one takes into account traditional investment decisions as well. It is shown that the introduction of capital does not affect the general structure of stationary equilibria: in both versions, there are three types of stable steady-state regimes, with only imitation, only innovation or a mixed policy. Using World Bank and ICRG statistical data for the period of 1980-1999, we test our hypothesis about the dependence of innovation and imitation costs on the relative productivity level, savings rate and an indicator of institutional quality. An appropriate choice of adjustment parameters of the model gives a possibility to generate trajectories of more than 80 countries and, for most of them, obtain qualitatively correct pictures of their evolution. The set of these trajectories reveals club convergence. It is shown that taking into account the evolution of the capital stock improves the quality of approximation.

Rent Seeking, Tax Policy, and Economic Growth

It is suggested a Romer-Barro - type model of endogenous economic growth where producers contest for distribution of a fixed share of the government’s tax revenue. The proportional contest mechanism is assumed. We studied conditions under which consumers gain or lose due to existence of the Rent seeking, tax policy, and economic growth (RS) opportunities. It is found that RS always decreases rate of growth but nevertheless may raise consumer’s overall utility. RS is advantageous if tax rate is too high or rate of production return is too low. The area of parameters, where RS has positive effect, is larger for more impatient consumers. We study also a static RS production model with heterogeneous producers and show that excessive tax burden creates incentives for RS (which is interpreted as corruption). It is argued that the producers’ support of corruption-free regimes depends on the marginal cost elasticity of the production technologies and may be reached due to technical progress. The results demonstrate that the connection, observed in a number of empirical papers, between economic development and RS may be two - way since it may be caused by factors that influence both RS and economic growth.

Towards the Theory of Privatization

An attempt is made to define main problems of the privatization theory and to present a survey of some results in this area. Two models are discussed that demonstrate paradoxical consequences of property right restrictions and dynamics of property right redistribution which entails a stratification of society. Two ways of transition from centralized to a market system (through privatization and through price liberalization processes) are compared in frameworks of a mixed economy model with queues. Relations between theoretical conclusions and real issues of the Russian privatization are discussed as well.