Maria Marchenko from the University of Manheim, Germany and the Higher School of Economics, Moscow yesterday presented a model to estimate the effect of an endogenous shock on future network performance. The presentation was held at HSE’s Center for Institutional Studies Research Seminar. The related paper „Endogenous Shocks in Social Networks: Effects of Students‘ Exam Retakes on their Friends‘ Future Performance“ should be available at https://sites.google.com/site/mariavmarchenko/jmp.pdf.
The network consists of 1st and 2nd year undergrad students at the Nizhniy Novgorod branch of HSE. Students create links and ties to peers, while living in the same dorm and taking the same courses.
The endogenous shock is a retake of one of the network members, that is, that one of the students in such a network fails in an exam. HSE is highly selective, after three retakes a student will expulsed by default.
Now, the question is, to what extent, if at all, the retake of one of my friends affects my future performance, and the future performance of all my other friends?
Two major issues arise in such a setting. 1. The shock is highly endogenous. Proper instruments, IV, are required. Maria uses the individual characteristics of the friend of my friend as instruments.
Estimation strategy. Maria uses a 2SLS approach. Probably oversimplifying her sophisticated model in a first step the dependent variable is the likelihood that I will fail in an exam, i.e. that I experience a retake. The residuals from this estimation are then taken for the second step. The depend variable is now the difference in my performance, in terms of average grading scores, between now (in the year the shock happens) and the next year. On the right hand side of the equation are an array of individual level characteristics, including tuition free place or not, higher education of parents, and high school exam and university entry scores; network characteristics, that is, and a term for correlated effects.
The effect of the shock on the network performance varies depending on the set of controls in the equation. But there is a negative effect; at maximum a retake of my friends will increase my future performance by .4 standard deviation, SD.
I very much like the basis idea of Maria’s work and the empirical approach. The crucial issue in studying peer effects is whether such an effect is physically, and logistically feasible, as Gigi Foster from UNSW’s Business School has highlighted in a presentation in the same seminar series roughly one year ago. In the case of students it is absolutely reasonable that there are potential spillover effects.
What I would like to see in a paper are some plots that demonstrate the predicted levels of the dependent variable “(change) in future performance” over the possible range of network characteristics, given an endogenous shock of retake; all other variables from the equation held at their mean value. This would also help to understand how robust the findings are.
Next to the arbitration court I recognized a small group of protesters today in front of a Delta Credit bank office. Mostly women, one of them with her pre-school aged son, they carried banners reading “societe general – bank slaveholder No. 1” and Delta Credit – against Russian people”, and “SOS”, among others (pictured). Delta Credit is part of Societe General, a French banking company.
Seemingly the protesters were foreign currency mortgage holders demanding the bank to restructure their debts since the strong devaluation of the Russian Ruble against Dollar and Euro has put them under extreme pressure to repay their liabilities. Similar protests were staged already earlier this year.
From Friday morning to Sunday afternoon Alexander sells delicious home-made honey and edible oil on an outdoor farmers market in Moscow. (As for my taste it is the best honey in Moscow and other experts confirm this judgement). Every Sunday afternoon, when market closes, Alexander drives back to his hometown Volgograd, some 600km south of Moscow — just to return to Moscow the next Wednesday together with his wife, his car packed with new luscious organic products from his beehives. In Moscow Alexander and his wife Lena sublease a single-room in an apartment nearby the market place. Lena is selling products on another farmers market in the capital, too.
This weekly cycle runs from early May, when outdoor farmers markets open, to late November, when the City regulation instructs them to close.
Alexander and Lena are otkhodniks, wandering workers.
To make a living otkhodniks temporary move out from their hometown to work and earn money elsewhere. They do not relocate to Moscow. No, out-of-town workers remain citizens of their hometown, they are enrolled in the OMS system, the public health system, and they pay taxes in the towns and villages where their houses or apartments are situated in.
Between 10 and 15 million individuals in Russia are otkhodniks, according to an estimate of Juri M. Plusin, Yana D. Zausaeva, Natalia N. Zhidkevich and Artemy A. Pozanenko, who recently published their path breaking study on Russian Labor Migrants (see my last post for a reference). Mostly married male blue collar workers in their young and middle-ages performing specialized tasks, wandering workers are a frequent feature of the Russian labor market – but yet an understudied subject, as Natalia and Artemy, who presented their book at the 6th Public Administration Discussion Meeting at the Higher School of Economics recently told an interested audience. The otkhodniks they interviewed as part of their extensive field studies in Russian cities, towns and villages, as well and their relatives and neighbors could not believe that social science researchers and policy makers have only patchy knowledge about this “phenomenon” of within-country labor migrants. In fact this special type of labor migration, otkhodnichestvo, literally, the state of being on the move for work, is not a phenomenon, but a regular feature of Russian economy and dates back at least to imperial 19th century Russia.
Oversimplifying the findings a bit there are four big centers throughout Russia that attract wandering workers: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Siberian region and regional cities and economy hubs. 500 kilometers away from Moscow is a peak of labor migration. Transportation within this radius of 500km it is relatively cheap. People can afford to travel to Moscow and back frequently. In turn Labor migration boosts private transportation companies. Beyond a distant of 500km labor migration towards Moscow decreases.
Being an otkhodnik is nothing that puts shame on you. In a deprived region with an oversupply of labor and a low wage level there is nothing negative about moving out to work hard elsewhere and bring home money that will feed your family and help to educate your children. Nowadays otkhodnichestvo is more frequent in the Southern region of Russian than in the North.
Both local and state authorities have no large interest in interfering. They stimulate local growth; people do not move away from low populated areas. Within-country labor migrants save the large chunk of their earning and bring it home. This is a feature that they share with Gastarbeiter, guest workers, from former Soviet republics; but apart from their origin an otkhodnik is different from a Gastarbeiter. Gastarbeiter are away from Kirgizstan, Tadzhikistan or Moldavia for a long period of time (because there is no low-cost 6 hour bus ride from Dushanbe to Moscow), while otkhodniks are only 2 weeks or a month out. Mid-and short term labor migrants should also not be confused with foreign specialists, which have a special employment and visa status in Russia.
– out for work
So far this sounds like a success story. Labor economist will consider this extremely high level of job mobility and adaptability as a positive feature of the labor market. Officially deprived regions become resilient because Labor Migrants spend almost all their earning in their native hometown rather than on Tverskaya Street in Moscow. All of this contributes to a rather high level of economic stability in the Russian regions. White collar workers in Moscow City skyscrapers do experience an economic downturn, blue collar otkhodniks constructing high-quality wooden dachas in the green belt outskirts of Moscow do not.
– Excuse me sir, are you an otkhodnik?
But what is the untold story? Being away for a long time from wife and kids has a negative impact on family relations. After work men meet new women; the spouse at home may become acquainted with somebody new, too. One out of four marriages breaks up due to this. Juri M. Plusin and his co-authors also find that most short term labor migrants do not work in line with their education. So the question is whether a follow up employment can be career advancement.
About 50 percent of the work is unofficial black labor. No registration, no taxes. That also means no employment security and labor law enforcement.
Otkhodniks are well-informed about what is going on in Moscow, probably better than Muscovites are, and channel this knowledge to their hometown region. Juri M. Plusin and his co-authors thus conclude that modern otkhodniks are “agents of urbanization”.
Some years ago I published a book on labor market reforms. In fact it was my PhD thesis. What I did was to investigate all reforms in written labor market regulation that did take place in Western Europe between 1950 and 2008. That was a lot of reading through labor laws and rules, and coding changes of them according to a newly developed scheme that compromised some 40 items and different levels of reforms.
Here is the reference including a Full-text link: Jäkel, Tim. „Arbeitsmarktreformen. Eine Empirisch-Vergleichende Analyse Für 16 Westeuropäische Länder 1950 Bis 2008.“ Heidelberg: Universitätsbibliothek der Universität Heidelberg, 2011. URL: http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/12204
In the end I identified and coded some 450 reforms. I found that labor in Germany is more tightly regulated compared to Denmark. But I also found that Greece was among the countries with a tight grip on the labor market as, well. But markets forces were set free in a several important areas in recent years.
What drives labor market reforms? Well, I found that center right-wing parties tend to loosen or to abolish restrictions more heavily compared to their social democratic counterparts – which not really comes at a big surprise and confirms Douglass Hibbs seminal proposition that parties make a difference.
But two things were missing in my analysis: the first one being the impact of the financial and economic crisis 2010 on labor market regulation. Not my fault, I started before the real estate bubble busted in 2008 and I just finished, when the crisis was still not over. We know now that Germany’s labor market performed quite well in times of crisis. This resilience was the harvest of prior reforms. Greece, in turn, performed less than bottom line. Working contracts had (and have) been tightly restricted to protect insiders from a young labor force. Youth unemployment skyrocketed up to 25% and more.
The second thing that I would add in a follow-up study is the perception of all this by regular people. What does a worker on the ground thinks about all this rule and policy-making? What are their motives and beliefs? What drives them to move to one place to another just looking for work (a labor economists would term this job mobility)?
Juri Plusnin, Yana Zausaeva, Artemy Pozanenko and Natalia Zhidkevich from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow wrote a book exactly about that. What they did was to conducted field research on domestic labor migrants in small villages and town in European Russia during 2011 and 2014 to investigate something that sociologist call a phenomenon, but that is in fact a regular thing for a large share of the Russian workforce: Being a Wandering worker.
Two of the authors, Artemy Pozanenko and Natalia Zhidkevich, presented their findings at the 6th Public Administration Discussion Meeting as the Higher School of Economics yesterday. Natalia and Artemy are both working as analysts at the HSE Laboratory for Local Administration. We should mention that their book Wandering Workers: Mores, Behavior, Way of Life, and Political Status of Domestic Russian Labor Migrants (2015. Publisher: ibidem Verlag Stuttgart) was recently nominated for the Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Award in the American Sociological Association’s Section on Labor and Labor Movements. Congratulations!
Save the date: The next Public Administration Discussion Meeting will take place on Monday, 18 April, 3pm at Higher School of Economics, 20, Myasnitskaya ulitsa, Moscow. Professor Robert Kramer from the National University of Public Service in Budapest will present a new paper on the shift from Skillset to Mindset in Policy-Leadership.
Public Administration is more or less about how to manage large organizations and to enable individuals within them to take effective decision. Or as Herbert A. Simon put it in the 4th ed. of his seminal book on Administrative Behavior:
„Administrative behavior is generally upbeat about organizations (…) and particulary on the conditions that enable them to operate well“ (H. A. Simon 1997, Administrative Behavior. The Free Press, p. viii)
We are quite well informed about models that seek to explain how people take decisions. I wonder whether there is rich evidence on how the architecture of a public agency building impacts organizational performance.
Does the Russian Federal Statistical Office perform better because its employees work in a building designed by LeCorbusier? Well, there will be better predictors of organizational performance. But it is nice to have a look at this building.
LeCorbusier won an international competition in 1928 to design this bulding, which is located in Myasnitskaya Street, some 300m away from Metro Station Chistye Prudy.
The lower part of Kitay-Gorod situated next to Moscow River was a living area mainly for poor people. Floods were a frequent event. The first port could be found there. Two storey houses dominated, with shops in the first floor, and apartments in the 2nd one.
Il’inka Street (ильинка ул.) was the place to negotiate and close financial deals. Street hosted several hostels for merchants. Most hostels belonged to Moscow monasteries. Pictured above is such building that once hosted such a monastery hostel. The former stock exchange was located at Birzhevaya square (Биржевая пл.).
Nikol’skaya ul. (Никольцкая ул.), today the most vibrant and fancy part of Kitay-Gorod was the area for academic purposes back then. Bookshops and printing presses could be found there.
In the area around Varvarka Street there was also an Open Market Space with several small lanes designated to particular good. In Rybny lane (russ. Рыбныи переулок), which still exist today (pictured) one could get seafood for instance.
Nowadays Il’inka Stree (ильинка ул.) is home to several financial state institutions. You can spot the front of the Federal Ministry of Finance, for instance. Passing by HSE’s Political Science Department (also very important) the Constitutional court can be recognized by its impressive clock (though not by an informative label such as mounted on the Ministry of Finance).
In current Moscow terms, Kitay-Gorod is quite small. At the height of Kitay-Gorod Metro Station there were closing wall and gate. Lubyanskaya square (Лубянская пл.), and also Myasnitskaya Street (Мясницкая ул.) were and are not part of Kitay-Gorod.
Today, Anna Lapidus and Narina Dadayan from the Higher School of Economics delivered a splendid walking tour through one of the oldest parts of Moscow: Kitay-Gorod.
Russia history is complex and multifaceted (too multifaceted for Google’s algorithms; typing Китай-город into Google Translate yields ‚China Town‘ – a translation that is at least misleading. Kitay-Gorod has neither strings attached to China nor anything in common with similarly named districts common in North American cities). There are two sense making explanations for the name. The first one is that Kitay derives from the old Russian word кита, fence; the district of wooden fence. The settlement of Moscow was founded in 1147, with the Kremlin at its centre. Kitay gorod is the area that was constructed next to the Kremlin and fortified with wooden fences.
The second potential explanation refers to the Italian word città, town or city. Italian architects designed large parts of the Kremlin’s architecture in the 15th and 16th century.
The former explanation is the more popular one. The latter one makes more sense, at least to me.
The district of Kitay-Gorod was and is still composed of three main roads: Nikol’skaya ul. (Никольцкая ул.), Il’inka ul. (ильинка ул.), and Varvarka Street (Варварка ул.). Varvarka Street was the religious street. Several churches have been located there. The first Romanov tsar was born in one of the houses located in Varvarka Street. Literally the Russian word Варвар comes from Barbars. Back then all foreigner that did not speak Russian were entitled to be called Barbars. So Varvarka Street was the street for the foreign traders. Nomen est omen.
For the latest issue of the magazine Re(a)d Square Yulia Kazakova, the journal’s editor in chief, and Saule Ismagulova asked me to share my views on Administrative Sciences and Public Administration in Russia. Yulia is also a graduate student at Higher Schools of Economics’ School of Public Administration. The interview can also be found at readsquare.ru/public-administration-from-a-scientific-point-of-view.
– Let’s begin with some questions about you. Do you have any experience of working in public administration?
I am a scientific researcher, not a public manager. I graduated from Heidelberg University with a PhD in political science. I’ve been studying decision-making in the public sector with a focus on governmental decisions, for instance, in labour market regulation. I have been fascinated by public economic approach to public administration since then. But often, in public economics as well as in political science, public administration is a black box- we don’t really want to know what is going on inside the box. After I finished my PhD I worked as a Research Fellow at the German Research Institute for Public Administration. And there I studied administrative processes more thoroughly. In essential feature of my research is to understand how public administration works, because otherwise you will build models that can hardly explain the reality.
Moscow Kremlin as seen from Arbat Square, Nov 2015, (c) Tim Jaekel
– Why did you become interested in public administration? What are the most attractive points for you about it?
Public sector is responsible for a large chunk of economic activities, about 30-50%, depending on the country. If we do not have an efficient, high-quality administration, we will have less well-being for citizens. This is the initial starting point: how can we manage bureaucratic processes more efficiently? And that’s one of my main subjects as a researcher. Public administration is relevant because it contributes to people’s well-being.
New Arbat Avenue with Moscow City looming, Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
– You have written articles and books where you analyzed public administration in different countries. It can be agreed that such researching process is a time-consuming activity. What does it represent and how is it usually organized?
First, you always have to come up with a good research question- that is to explain in one sentence what you are going to analyze in your research term paper, your PhD thesis or a journal article. That might sound simple, but it is hard work. The second step is to explain in two additional sentences why your topic is relevant at all. Researchers tend to ignore the question whether their activities are of any relevance for public practitioners or the general public. If it is not relevant, don’t write about it. The underlying hard work is to review the literature, develop a theoretical model and to look at processes in public sector management – waste management or public transportation, for instance. Because normally there’s no apple that falls on your head and make you think of Universal Law of Public Administration – there are just too few apple trees located on HSE campus. If you do a comparative research project a major point is case election. Here, you should ask yourself: Why do you want to compare certain countries? Why does this make sense? It’s time-consuming, but you have to conceive the research process from its ending – what do you want to achieve? And then it’s much easier to manage your research process.
Moscow, upper part of one of the „seven sisters“ skyscraper, this one hosting the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
– Does an ideal model of public management exist? I mean whether you can give an example of some countries (regions or municipals) which, to your mind, can be characterized by high standards of public performance.
There is no “one size fits all model of public management. The main objective of public administration should be to contribute to citizens’ well-being. But people have different preferences. If you have children, you want to have playing fields, high-quality public schools. Safety, recreational areas and green environment are the things that most people consider important. Others want to have a say in budgetary issues, so municipalities have to balance expenditures and inflows. A lot of goals should be achieved, but these goals are always conflicting. There is a limited amount of resources, and public sector has to decide how to allocate them (for example, how much money should be spent on building new roads?). It’s a task of managing an allocation process. A good public administration is the one which at least tries to maximize as many goals as possible and keep the side effects limited. That’s a challenging process because resources are always limited. If they try successfully, they are a good public administration. But there are different models that can succeed.
Moscow, Metro station Arbatskaya, Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
Sweden and Switzerland are two fantastic cases for researchers. In Switzerland there is a wide range of direct democracy at all layers of government. If the municipalities want to raise their local income tax rate, they have to call people to the ballot box. This creates consensus, and at the same limits inefficiencies in the public sector.
Moscow, Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
Sweden has an outstanding tradition of performance measurement and performance evaluation in the public sector. And they particular focus on the quality of public service delivery, and they made large steps to go beyond the common and flawed cost-per unit approach we saw in the 1990ies as part of the New Public Management doctrine. They established the notion that citizens and taxpayers have a right to receive the best quality of public services. This is why I like to do research on Sweden.
– What is special about Russian public administration? Does it have definite peculiarities that differ it from that in other countries? Can you give some examples of its advantages and drawbacks?
The strength of Russian people is that they are able to adapt to any circumstances. I see that in Moscow the city government is willing to adopt new practices. There are a lot of things changing in everyday life: new time tables and public transportation, which are better compared to the old ones. The city government is open-minded, willing to try new things. A drawback of Russian public administration can be given from everyday life experience. Sometimes frontline staff is unfriendly – or let us say – rude. If you go to a public museum and ask a staff member where is this and that, they might look at you in a way like ‘what do you want from me?’ Another potential drawback is that too strict hierarchical thinking limits the opportunities offered by thinking and doing things differently. But these are just some examples. Russia is an extremely multifaceted country.
Moscow Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
– They say that innovations are becoming a significant part of the successful public service performance. What innovations have been introduced in the practice of public service in the last several years? Does innovative public management have limits?
Firstly, E-government is a large trend in innovative behavior. To deliver more public services online is a common trend in the US, in England or Germany alike. Another innovation is the adoption of citizens’ service centres and one-stop agencies. The relevant question is why some public organizations innovate while others do not. Prior research found for instance that innovative organizations staff includes externally hired professionals, and that the organization offers knowledge and skill training which in turn increases encouragement on innovative behavior. But we have limited evidence on how policy-choices from other organizations affect decision making. In my own research I for instance analyze how the performance of an organization and strategic interaction among jurisdictions contribute to innovative behavior in Public Administration.
– It’s not surprising that when local public servants give an account to higher organs, they can embellish their reports with more positive results of their work. What do you think: why do they prefer telling about positive things rather than problems and how can this gap in local public sector be solved?
This is kind of human behavior: everybody wants to be successful and achieve goals- I do not know anybody who wants to showcase his own failure. But this is not reasonable for any modern public sector organization. You have to communicate shortfalls and the underlying reasons properly. Organizations have to find a balance between reporting the very last digit of available performance data – open data do not has be a fetish but a tool for holding bureaucrats to account – and reasonable non-disclosure. To identify potential performance gaps and the underlying reasons is important for improvement. From interviews with practitioners in different countries I found that most of them will only share their experiences and knowledge behind closed doors with peers they consider to be trustworthy. An organization thus has to establish a culture of internal trust, a positive culture of error tolerance and channels for knowledge transfer without any fears of being blamed – but this is different from merely sweeping things under the carpet.
Pictured: Moscow, Residence of an Embassador (bottom left), and Appartment complex that looks like an open book (located in Kompozitorskaya ul.)
– At HSE day you gave the lecture called «Blame games and risk avoidance: how decision making is linked to relative performance and potential peer effects». Please, share your impressions about the lecture.
I enjoyed delivering the Lecture in Gorky Park very much. Russian students are respectful to teachers and interested in learning new things. At the same time they are also keen to try out new things. If they want to solve a problem, they’ll find a way to do it. This is a good combination.
Pictured: Moscow, Khram Spasa Preobrazheniya Gospodnya na Peskakh, Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
– Which qualities and skills should a rational public manager possess, to your mind?
A modern public manager hates blind obedience; she is keen to deviate from the ‘good old tradition’ for the sake of citizen’s well-being. She is sensitive to performance gaps, that is, she intends to maintain an acceptable level of performance, or to improve performance. She is used to learn and to share knowledge with her peers in other jurisdictions. Finally she is open-minded, and highly motivated.
Thank you for the interview!
Picured: Head of one of the seven sisters skyscrapers, this one located at Smolenskiy Chausee, Nov 2015 (c) Tim Jaekel
Don’t believe the Zeitgeist: Despite current High Politics tensions Germany and Russia share centuries-old ties, from dynastical and social linkages to economic and cultural links: The German Kaiser Wilhelm II. and tsar Nicolaus II were cousins to each other. Unique German terms like Butterbrot, Kindergarten, and Sturmangriff (not so nice) have diffused into Russian language. A nice example of mutual fusion is the Russian word почтaмт (pictured above: почтaмт, Myasnitskaya ul. Moscow), post office, which is a combination of почтa, mail delivery service, and the German word for bureaucracy, or bureaucratic agency, Amt.
Winter in Moscow Jan 2016
So it is laudable that on April 12, 2016 Higher School of Economics’ School of Foreign Languages in Moscow will host the 2nd international student’s conference “Welt und Wissenschaft”, Globe and Science. The conference is organized by Julia Pasko, an Associate Professor at HSE Language School. The event provides graduate students with an opportunity to present and discuss own research with peers and senior researcher. Working language will be German.
Winter in Moscow, Jan 2016
The event will be divided into five thematic panels: economic policy (Chairs: Michael Rochlitz and Carsten Sprenger), legal issue, politics and public administration (Chair: Tim Jaekel), as well sociological issues (Chair: Christian Froehlich).
You can now propose a paper. Deadline for submission is February 15, 2016. To submit a proposal
Recently I gave an interview to Anna Chernyakhovskaya from the HSE News service. She asked me to share my experiences on working and living in Moscow. Here are her questions and my answers, as well as some related impressions from Moscow.
— You recently joined HSE. What was the most challenging aspect in making that decision?
— Deciding to join the Higher School of Economics was not challenging. HSE is a renowned research university and provides me with an excellent research environment. But dealing with red tape, finding a proper apartment within my budget and bearing the effective costs of relocation was challenging.
— This is your first international job. What are the first impressions of living and working in an international environment?
— Living and working in Moscow broadens a person’s intellectual scope. This is why I made the decision to come here.
— What do you see as your goals for the 2015-2016 academic year at the university?
— My goals are to submit to top international journals in the field of Public Administration, deliver high-quality teaching and contribute to knowledge exchange within the university.
— What would you recommend to other international professionals who may be thinking of working in Russia?
— Learn and speak Russian wherever and whenever you can. The benefits so much outweigh the short-term opportunity costs (the usual statement is ‘I do not have time for that’ – but anybody does nowadays). Living in Moscow without acquiring any Russian language skills is useless and boring.
— What are three things that cause you difficulty in Moscow and three things that make life here attractive?
— Moscow offers a spectacular living environment. The range of astonishing architecture, from pre-1917 to modern, in all parts of the city is impressive and inspiring. Museums, events, learning and sports activities for kids – you name it.
Moscow is a hub for excellent researchers, including international ones. The pool of knowledge and thus the opportunities for spill over and cooperation are immense.
Moscow is a megacity of 15 million, but it is a green city. Moscow offers plenty of world-class and cost-free recreational areas, parks, and activities beyond the usual suspects of the Kremlin and Red Square.
Chistye Prudy
Neskuchny sad
Botanicheskiy sad MGU
Park im. Gorkogo
Social competition is intense in Moscow. Competitive pressure and the resulting adaptive behaviour can be witnessed everywhere.
Life in Moscow is expensive. Only three things in Moscow are cheap – fuel, bread and public transportation – everything else is expensive. If you have money you can live a decent life; without money life is sad like anywhere else in the world.
The original interview can be found on HSE News Website at http://www.hse.ru/en/news/campus/163556331.html. [External Link].
