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Почему рухнул советский социализм. Рецензия на книгу китайского автора о крахе советского социализма. Лу Айго. Советский Союз. Причины распада и уроки. Саньлянь шу дянь, Пекин, 2025（路爱国. 苏联崩溃的原因及教训. 三聯書店, 2025).
Get PDFThere is no shortage of research in China on the collapse of the USSR and Soviet socialism, and on the lessons of this collapse for China. A review article on the achievements of Chinese Sovietology (Zuo Fengrong, 2022) states that experts generally acknowledge Gorbachev's direct responsibility for the collapse of the USSR, but do not attribute it solely to the "betrayal" of a few leaders. Rather they expose the flaws of the Soviet model – inability to stimulate the enthusiasm and creativity of the people, the slowdown in economic growth and the decline in efficiency - factors that make it impossible to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not an accident. "Scholars have shown that it was precisely the CPSU’s loss of popular support that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union", – writes Zuo Fengrong (2022).
Against this background, the book under review stands out sharply. Lu Aiguo proves the exact opposite – it was not the Communist Party that lost the support of the people, but the people who lost control over the leadership of the Communist Party and the state. The author's main idea is that the USSR collapsed not because of internal problems, although there were plenty of them, but because of a change in the course initiated by the elite, because of a "wormhole in the heart," to use a well-known Chinese idiom that roughly corresponds to the Russian "a fish rots from the head.
The Equality of the Natural Rates of Interest, Inflation and Economic growth, and Its Implications for Monetary Policy
Get PDFThis paper considers the role of savings as that of managing the tradeoff between the amount consumed of present varieties and the investment into improving the quality of varieties in the future. Under this framework, it is shown that the rates of interest, inflation and economic growth are equal and derived from the same phenomenon: innovation. Consequently, this leads to a monetary policy recommendation, namely to attempt to bind the rates of inflation and interest to the directly observable real rate of economic growth
Willful ignorance in social decisions: robust, yet contextually sensitive
Get PDFAlthough humans exhibit many prosocial behaviors, when the social benefits of their options are uncertain, surprisingly many avoid learning them before choosing, using ignorance as an excuse to dodge moral obligations and revert to selfish behavior. This kind of willful ignorance is robust in the sense that researchers have documented it using a wide array of methods, across diverse settings, and a time period spanning nearly two decades. At the same time, however, the degree to which it manifests is inconsistent across and within studies. Some of these inconsistencies stem from obvious factors, while the moderators driving others have yet to be identified or are poorly understood. This study synthesizes and organizes these contextual factors, providing recommendations for future research
Driving AI Adoption in the EU: A Quantitative Analysis of Macroeconomic Influences
Get PDFThis article investigates macroeconomic factors that support the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies by large European Union (EU) enterprises. In this analysis, panel data regression is combined with machine learning to investigate how macroeconomic variables like health spending, domestic credit, exports, gross capital formation, and inflation, along with health spending and trade openness, influence the share of enterprises that adopt at least one type of AI technology (ALOAI). The results of the estimations—based on fixed and random effects models with 151 observations—show that health spending, inflation, and trade and GDP per capita have positively significant associations with adoption, with significant negative correlations visible with and among domestic credit, exports, and gross capital formation. In adjunct to this, the regression of machine learning models (KNN, Boosting, Random Forest) is benchmarked with MSE, RMSE, MAE, MAPE, and R² measures with KNN performing perfectly on all measures, although with some concerns regarding data overfitting. Furthermore, cluster analysis (Hierarchical, Density-Based, Neighborhood-Based) identifies hidden EU country groups with comparable macroeconomic variables and comparable ALOAI. Notably, those with characteristics of high integration in international trade, access to credit, and strong GDP per capita indicate large ALOAI levels, whereas those with macroeconomic volatility and under-investment in innovation trail behind. These findings suggest that securing the adoption of AI is not merely about finance and infrastructure but also about policy alignment and institutional preparedness. This work provides evidence-driven policy advice by presenting an integrated data-driven analytical framework to comprehend and manage AI diffusion within EU industry sectors
The Effects of the Tobacco 21 Minimum Legal Sales Age Policy on Respiratory Health
Get PDFThis paper examines the effects of tobacco restrictions policy on respiratory health. We leverage the heterogeneous timing across states in the adoption of the policy from a sample of 8,175 individuals between the ages of 18 and 21. Using the 2011 to 2019 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), we estimate the impact of the Tobacco 21 MLSA policy on the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a progressive lung condition marked by airflow obstruction due to prolonged exposure to irritants like cigarette smoke and air pollution. We find that the T21 MLSA policy lowered the risk of COPD by 11.4 percentage points, or approximately 6.7%, among young adults between the ages of 18 and 21. In addition, we find that the policy had a greater effect on male, black, and Hispanic populations. We also find the policy to be more effective among 20-year-old unemployed young adults with some college education. These findings suggest that the T21 MLSA policy has effectively reduced respiratory health problems among teenagers and young adults, supporting its public health benefits to society. Therefore, states that are yet to adopt the T21 MLSA policy should consider its potential to decrease the risk of COPD and, ultimately, tobacco-related mortality as a valuable component of their health policy
On a Definition of Trend
Get PDFSeveral reasons explain the absence of a precise, complete and widely accepted definition of trend for economic time series, and the existence of two major disparate models is one of the most important. A recent operational proposal tried to overcome this difficulty resorting to a statistical test with good asymptotic properties against both those alternatives. However, this proposal may be criticized because it rests on a tool for inductive, not deductive, inference. Besides criticizing this recent definition, drawing heavily on previous ones, the paper provides a new proposal, more complete, containing several necessary but no sufficient condition(s)
Ballots, Budgets and Bricks: Brexit and the Polarisation of Individual Economic Behaviours
Get PDFDoes political polarisation influence actual economic behaviours? Using British nationally representative surveys and administrative data, we document how the Brexit referendum triggered stark divergences in individual micro and macro expectations between Leave and Remain supporters. Compared to existing research, we show how these polarising effects were driven by a specific policy issue and mostly unrelated to traditional partisan identities. We also demonstrate how these diverging beliefs influenced major real financial decisions. Leavers became more likely to purchase durable goods and engage in housing transactions, and areas with higher proportions of Leave voters experienced increased housing transaction volumes and rising prices
I didn’t know either: how beliefs about norms shape strategic ignorance
Get PDFPeople often avoid information to evade social obligations and justify selfish behavior. However, such behavior unfolds within a social context, where beliefs about others’ actions shape individual choices. This study examines how social expectations, shaped by perceived norms and decision framing, influence individuals’ willingness to avoid information. In a modified moral wiggle-room game, participants first predict how often others acquired information, then receive feedback about others’ information-seeking behavior before making their own decision as the dictator. The experiment manipulates (1) the feedback on norms participants receive, reflecting varying rates of information avoidance, and (2) whether they know in advance that they will be making the decision themselves, thereby inducing either a \textit{self-referential} or \textit{socially} framed perspective. Individuals were more likely to acquire information when exposed to norms favoring transparency, with pessimistic participants—those who believed ignorance was common—responding most strongly. Optimistic individuals showed little adjustment. Contrary to expectations, there was little evidence that participants distorted their beliefs about others to justify selfish behavior. However, a notable gender difference emerged: female participants, when primed with self-referential framing, were significantly less responsive to normative cues than males. Finally, an exploratory comparison with previous experiments suggests that belief elicitation itself, even in the absence of normative cues, significantly reduces information avoidance, highlighting a promising and scalable intervention for promoting transparency
Exploratory Study on How Substance Use Affects Gambling and Spending Among Students
Get PDFThis research examines the connection between gambling behavior and substance use among youths, with special interest regarding gender difference and the cost of gambling. With a representative sample of 700 high school students aged between ages of 14 and 18 years, the research utilized structured questionnaires to collect information. Respondents indicated their participation on gambling, ranging from slot and scratch cards to internet gambling and sports betting, and their use of psychoactive drugs. Analysis identifies a strong, statistically significant connection between gambling and use of substances, particularly among respondents who use slot gambling or sport betting. For the entire sample, 19.7% gambled and 24% took substances. Use of substances, particularly psychoactive drugs and tobacco use, were much more prevalent among gamblers compared with non-gamblers, and an associated pattern, particularly among males, unveiled much more salient features. Log odds ratio and Fisher’s exact test analysis uncovered much elevated probabilities of use of substances among gamblers, particularly among slot machine users, with odds ratios higher than 2.0 among some female subgroups. Nevertheless, internet gambling could not demonstrate strong associations with use of substances, but there revealed an evident modest positive connection among men users. Data on expenditure unveiled the majority of young persons pay less than €10 monthly on gambling, but there exists a small group with much elevated expenditure. These respondents accounted for the size of the right-skewed distribution and may demonstrate burgeoning signs of harmful gambling. Prevention and detection are highlighted with special interest regarding gender-specific behavior. Recommendations are combined, integrated prevention among young persons within schools and communities, especially regarding gambling and use of substances during youth
Asymmetric Price Adjustment over the Business Cycle
Get PDFStudies of micro-level price datasets find more frequent small price increases than decreases, which can be explained by consumer inattention because time-constrained shoppers might ignore small price changes. Recent empirical studies of the link between shopping behavior and price attention over the business cycle find that consumers are more (less) attentive to prices during economic downturns (booms). These two sets of findings have a testable implication: the asymmetry in small price changes should vary over the business cycle—it should diminish during recessions and strengthen during expansions. We test this prediction using a large US store-level dataset with more than 98 million weekly price observations for the years 1989–1997, which includes an 8-month recession period, as defined by the NBER. We compare price adjustments between periods of recession (high unemployment) and expansion (low unemployment). Focusing on small price changes, we find, consistent with our hypothesis, that there is a greater asymmetry in small price changes during periods of low unemployment compared to the periods of high unemployment, implying that firms’ price-setting behavior varies over the business cycle