Wolfram Schrettl

Do the Russians Really Save that Much? - Alternate Estimates from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey

We use a new independent survey of 4000 Russian households (the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey or RLMS) to study their saving behavior. The RLMS household saving rate (12) is less than half the official figure (29). Despite the massive changes of the transition, the Russian household saving rate of 1994 cannot be shown to be different from that of 1976. The patterns of Russian household saving differ from international experience: Its paradoxical U-shaped saving-age relationship may be explained by the dramatic deterioration of life expectancies of middle-aged Russians.

On Some Barriers to Transition

Barriers to market-oriented reforms in Eastern Europe and in the newly emerging states in the area of the former Soviet Union were for a long time largely of domestic origin. Thus, the measures were explicitly confined to the introduction of some market elements into an essentially unchanged systemic environment rather than being aimed at transformation of the core of that system itself. The obvious lack of success of partial reforms eventually lent credence to longstanding theoretical arguments that had never ceased to predict precisely that failure.