3rd International ICSID Conference "Regional Heterogeneity and Incentives for Governance"

On May 29-31, 2014 the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID, HSE) held an international conference on ‘Regional Heterogeneity and Incentives for Governance’ in Pushkin, St. Petersburg. The conference began with the EACES-HSE workshop "Political Economy of Development: A Comparative Perspective". Among many topics, participants discussed the long and short-term prospects for institutions, processes of institutionalization, investment climate, lending, and enterprise location in Russia.

The major goal of the conference was to bring together Russian and foreign experts in political economy and economic policy who had an interest in regional politics, bureaucracy, and property rights. That year, the following ICSID associates and partners took part in the conference: Daniel Treisman (UCLA), William Pyle (Middlebury College), Thomas Remington (Emory University), Alexander Libman (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management), John Reuter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Higher School of Economics), along with many others. The organizers have also invited leading experts on regional governance and development in China and Russia to participate in the event.

The researchers focused largely, although not exclusively, on the Russian and Chinese experience in these areas. That topicwas motivated by a rethinking of the substantive role of the state in developing economies. It was also driven by a reconsideration of the important role that regional heterogeneity and subnational economic and political processes play in the successful realization of national political development programmes.

That conference was the third annual event of its type organized by the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development. In May 2012, the conference was dedicated to ‘Institutions, Development, and Interest Groups’. Participants explored the process of modernization and institutional change in transition and developing countries through the prism of transition from limited access order to open access order, as proposed by Douglas North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast. In June 2013, the organizers brought together Russian and foreign experts in political economy to discuss new data and methods available to researchers who study institutions and economic development. In 2014, the researchers continued their work on institutions and economic development, with a primary focus on the cases of Russia and China. The conference was held at the HSE Management training centre – a multifunctional complex that includes a hotel, conference halls and smaller work rooms. The centre was situated in Pushkin, an historical town 40 minutes away from St. Petersburg’s city centre, with the famous Tzarskoe Selo 10 minutes away from the conference venue.

The International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development is one of the international laboratories established by the Higher School of Economics in 2011. Its current team includes researchers from Russia, the U.S. and Europe.