Social Policy and Vocational Education
Participants from ICSID: Thomas Remington, Israel Marques, Irina Levina, Denis Ivanov, Ekaterina Borisova, Vladimir Bazavliuk
External Partners: Sarah Sokhey, Jacob Schaffer
Further information on the project: Israel Marques (imarques at hse.ru)
Who supports the welfare state and why? When do employers support significant expansions and reforms of social policy? And how can employers make use of social policies to shape the quality of the labor force? A large and long-standing body of research in contemporary political economy has been pre-occupied with these questions and has shown that the answers are highly related. On the one hand, employers support social policy in order to recruit and retain highly skilled workers. On the other hand, workers (especially those investing in high quality human capital) value social policy as insurance against income volatility and loss. Thus skill formation and social policy are deeply linked. Unfortunately, this literature has been Euro-centric, calling into question whether its findings apply in countries where weak institutional constraints complicate cooperation and service provision and transitions to the market economy remain incomplete. In this project, we exploit variation across Russia’s regions and in the Post-communist Countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia in order to answer these questions.
Some of our work focuses on the micro-level, exploring what types of individuals and firms support various social policies and related programs. In part, our work relies on traditional survey instruments, including various large-scale individual and firm level surveys conducted across a broad swathe of Russia’s regions. For example, we make use of cross-national surveys (and cross-regional ones within Russia) to explore how social trust and institutional quality – control of corruption, state capacity, and rule of law – shape the preferences of individuals over specific types of social policy and their targeting. We also make use of a unique survey of 666 Russian firms to explore the relationship between political connections, the ability to evade taxes, and support for social policy. In 2015, we will supplement this work with a set of laboratory experiments conducted with students in the US and Russia to better understand the precise mechanisms that link social trust and institutional quality to social policy preferences.
Our work also embraces macro-level analyses. In 2015, we have begun to collect data on vocational education reform in Russia’s regions. In particular, we have constructed fine-grained data on the formal linkages between all of Russia’s secondary vocational education institutions and local businesses. This data will allow us to provide the first (to our knowledge) systematic characterization of the state of vocational education in Russia’s regions and to identify the regional determinants of different skill formation regimes. Using this data, we also explore how and when firms are able to form public private partnerships with local governments in order to promote changes in antiquated skill formation regimes.
Ongoing Projects
· The Reform of Skill Formation in Russia (Remington, T., Marques, I., Bazavluk, V.)
· Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia (E. Borisova, A. Govorun, D. Ivanov, I. Levina)
· Trust and Preferences for Redistribution: Experimental Evidence from Two Countries (E. Borisova, I. Levina, I. Marques, S. Sokhey)
· Institutional Quality and Social Policy Preferences: Experimental Evidence from the US and Russia (I. Marques, J. Schaffer, S. Sokhey)
· Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia (I. Marques)
· Institutions, Mass Preferences, and the 2001 Russian Pension Reform (I. Marques)
Publications
Borisova E., Govorun A., Ivanov D., Levina I. (2014) Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia // Series: Economics, WP BRP 67
Remington, T., Marques. I. (2014). The Reform Of Skill Formation In Russia: Regional Responses. Higher School of Economics Research Paper No.WP BRP 19/PS/2014.
Marques, I. (2014). Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia. Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 87/EC/2014
Conference Presentations
American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). San Antonio, TX. November 20, 2014: “Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia”, “The Politics of Social Insurance in Russia and China”
Public Goods through Private Eyes. Project concluding conference. Poland, Warsaw, October 9-10, 2014: “What Is the Relationship between Trust and Preferences for Redistribution in Russia?”
A Workshop on the Political Economy of Russia, Columbia University, New York (USA), September 18-19, 2014: “The Reform Of Skill Formation In Russia: Regional Responses”; “Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia”
American Political Science Association, Washington, DC. August 28, 2014: “Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia”, “The Politics of Social Insurance in Russia and China”
European School for New Institutional Economics (ESNIE), Cargese, France, May 19-23, 2014: “Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia”
Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), Chicago, Il. April 03, 2014: “Institutions, Mass Preferences, and the 2001 Russian Pension Reform”
External Partners: Sarah Sokhey, Jacob Schaffer
Further information on the project: Israel Marques (imarques at hse.ru)
Who supports the welfare state and why? When do employers support significant expansions and reforms of social policy? And how can employers make use of social policies to shape the quality of the labor force? A large and long-standing body of research in contemporary political economy has been pre-occupied with these questions and has shown that the answers are highly related. On the one hand, employers support social policy in order to recruit and retain highly skilled workers. On the other hand, workers (especially those investing in high quality human capital) value social policy as insurance against income volatility and loss. Thus skill formation and social policy are deeply linked. Unfortunately, this literature has been Euro-centric, calling into question whether its findings apply in countries where weak institutional constraints complicate cooperation and service provision and transitions to the market economy remain incomplete. In this project, we exploit variation across Russia’s regions and in the Post-communist Countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia in order to answer these questions.
Some of our work focuses on the micro-level, exploring what types of individuals and firms support various social policies and related programs. In part, our work relies on traditional survey instruments, including various large-scale individual and firm level surveys conducted across a broad swathe of Russia’s regions. For example, we make use of cross-national surveys (and cross-regional ones within Russia) to explore how social trust and institutional quality – control of corruption, state capacity, and rule of law – shape the preferences of individuals over specific types of social policy and their targeting. We also make use of a unique survey of 666 Russian firms to explore the relationship between political connections, the ability to evade taxes, and support for social policy. In 2015, we will supplement this work with a set of laboratory experiments conducted with students in the US and Russia to better understand the precise mechanisms that link social trust and institutional quality to social policy preferences.
Our work also embraces macro-level analyses. In 2015, we have begun to collect data on vocational education reform in Russia’s regions. In particular, we have constructed fine-grained data on the formal linkages between all of Russia’s secondary vocational education institutions and local businesses. This data will allow us to provide the first (to our knowledge) systematic characterization of the state of vocational education in Russia’s regions and to identify the regional determinants of different skill formation regimes. Using this data, we also explore how and when firms are able to form public private partnerships with local governments in order to promote changes in antiquated skill formation regimes.
Ongoing Projects
· The Reform of Skill Formation in Russia (Remington, T., Marques, I., Bazavluk, V.)
· Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia (E. Borisova, A. Govorun, D. Ivanov, I. Levina)
· Trust and Preferences for Redistribution: Experimental Evidence from Two Countries (E. Borisova, I. Levina, I. Marques, S. Sokhey)
· Institutional Quality and Social Policy Preferences: Experimental Evidence from the US and Russia (I. Marques, J. Schaffer, S. Sokhey)
· Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia (I. Marques)
· Institutions, Mass Preferences, and the 2001 Russian Pension Reform (I. Marques)
Publications
Borisova E., Govorun A., Ivanov D., Levina I. (2014) Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia // Series: Economics, WP BRP 67
Remington, T., Marques. I. (2014). The Reform Of Skill Formation In Russia: Regional Responses. Higher School of Economics Research Paper No.WP BRP 19/PS/2014.
Marques, I. (2014). Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia. Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 87/EC/2014
Conference Presentations
American Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). San Antonio, TX. November 20, 2014: “Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia”, “The Politics of Social Insurance in Russia and China”
Public Goods through Private Eyes. Project concluding conference. Poland, Warsaw, October 9-10, 2014: “What Is the Relationship between Trust and Preferences for Redistribution in Russia?”
A Workshop on the Political Economy of Russia, Columbia University, New York (USA), September 18-19, 2014: “The Reform Of Skill Formation In Russia: Regional Responses”; “Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia”
American Political Science Association, Washington, DC. August 28, 2014: “Firm Level Preferences for Social Policy in the Post-Communist Bloc: Evidence from Russia”, “The Politics of Social Insurance in Russia and China”
European School for New Institutional Economics (ESNIE), Cargese, France, May 19-23, 2014: “Who to Help? Trust and Preferences over Redistribution in Russia”
Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA), Chicago, Il. April 03, 2014: “Institutions, Mass Preferences, and the 2001 Russian Pension Reform”
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