Publications

The world’s largest community of scientists disintegrated following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. With extremely scarce resources and limited academic freedom as starting points, researchers in this region have been creating new knowledge; they have been building on rich scientific traditions in selected disciplines and, at times, paving new paths in non-traditional disciplines. At present, the cumulative contribution of post-Soviet countries to global research output is only three percent, indicating that these countries are not key players on the global research scene. This study uses bibliometric methods to offer novel empirical insight into the quantity and impact of academic publications; it also looks at the quality of journals in which the output is published. The findings reveal that fifteen post-Soviet countries differ considerably in terms of how much they have prioritised research, as well as the quantity, quality, and impact of their publications. The research productivity across the region has not been high and, taken together, these countries have produced publications of considerably lower quality and lower impact when viewed in the context of global research output. At the same time, researchers from post-Soviet countries tap into international collaborative networks actively, resulting in an exceptionally large proportion of publications from this region being internationally co-authored. In the historical context of Soviet research being known as one of the least collaborative globally, this finding indicates that researchers in the region are attractive to international collaborators and may be seeking such partnerships due to relatively modest research capacity at home.

How can we maximize what is learned from a replication study? In the creative destruction approach to replication, the original hypothesis is compared not only to the null hypothesis, but also to predictions derived from multiple alternative theoretical accounts of the phenomenon. To this end, new populations and measures are included in the design in addition to the original ones, to help determine which theory best accounts for the results across multiple key outcomes and contexts. The present pre-registered empirical project compared the Implicit Puritanism account of intuitive work and sex morality to theories positing regional, religious, and social class differences; explicit rather than implicit cultural differences in values; self-expression vs. survival values as a key cultural fault line; the general moralization of work; and false positive effects. Contradicting Implicit Puritanism's core theoretical claim of a distinct American work morality, a number of targeted findings replicated across multiple comparison cultures, whereas several failed to replicate in all samples and were identified as likely false positives. No support emerged for theories predicting regional variability and specific individual-differences moderators (religious affiliation, religiosity, and education level). Overall, the results provide evidence that work is intuitively moralized across cultures.

During periods of financial turmoil, depositor behaviour is influenced by the economic information environment, which is largely formed by the media—at least for retail depositors. Therefore the severity of bank runs during financial crises, and their efficiency might be conditional on the volume of the bad news appearing in the media during a crisis. If the news flow remains unrestrained, then the probability of bank runs will increase due to the information sensitivity of depositors. Examining whether it is possible to reduce the severity of bank runs during a crisis by controlling the media, we use the panel data 28 countries from 2001 until 2016. We analyze the impact of media freedom on the growth rate of retail deposits: the major role in bank runs is usually played by unsophisticated individual depositors. Generally the results do not support the hypothesis that changes in the degree of media freedom directly influence behavioural strategies of retail depositors during financial crises. However information limitations may be an instrument to support the market discipline mechanisms: higher media freedom during crises seems to blur the information environment depositors make decisions in. Media restrictions could also prevent the financial literacy effect from dilution during financial crises, ensuring that market discipline is not further undermined.

Doctoral education worldwide is characterized by parallel trends toward diversity and, at the same time, toward unification. There is no such thing as a standard doctoral education model. The landscape of doctoral education across the world is quite diverse and there is a considerable rise in its variations and flexibility. However, doctoral education has become a global market with flows of international students, faculty, and graduates who create a demand for unification of standards and benchmarking.

Many governments attempt to improve national higher education through the competitive support of universities. These policy approaches raise questions about the impact on the entire system—both in research and educational—of targeted support for a small number of universities. Addressing challenges in the measurement of university excellence initiatives are among the most vital topics in research evaluation due to the central roles they often play in national research and university policy efforts. Using data from the Russian University Excellence Initiative (RUEI), we measure the spillover effects of such focused support and demonstrate that a broader impact does exist. In particular, we examine the performance of higher education institutions that were not part of RUEI and were not directly supported by it. We compare the university performance in regions both with and without RUEI universities. In doing so, we measure the indirect impact of RUEI on the higher education sector at the regional level. We show a positive effect on the level of publication activity that has recently become apparent. However, there has been no effect on the share of young faculty, international collaboration in publications, or the quality of enrollment. Judging from the broader research policy\research evaluation perspective, our study sheds light on the systemic effects of excellence initiatives, which are often neglected. Besides, excellence initiatives could trigger a change in the approach to evaluating research. So government should develop measure properly, taking into account various consequences, some of which are considered in our article.

Purpose

The first year of college is a stressful life period connected with the experience of loneliness, isolation and depression since the majority of freshmen can no longer maintain an equally close relationship with school friends and family. Social networks have become a significant part of students' daily lives and might be an effective tool for maintaining relationship and reducing loneliness. There are contradictory results concerning the relationship between social networks sites (SNS) use and feelings of loneliness.

Design/methodology/approach

A four-week experiment was conducted to study the effect of SNS on feelings of social and emotional loneliness across freshmen. The treatment group (n = 40) took a break from SNS, while the control group (n = 37) used SNS as usual.

Findings

Comparison of the treatment and control groups showed that quitting SNS does not change either feeling of social/emotional loneliness. This paper also found that feelings of social and emotional loneliness did not depend on freshmen's positive/negative attitudes toward being alone.

Originality/value

This study is one of the few that uses experimental design to study the effects of using social networks on the psychological state of students in the context of higher education. The results showed that refusing SNS use can have a positive potential for psychological well-being of freshmen since solitude can be used by them as time for self-discovery and self-development. According to the results, social networks neither increase nor decrease the feeling of loneliness, and offline learning and communication environment plays a more significant role in the adaptation of freshmen. These results allow to take a new look at the studies related to the relationship between SNS use and loneliness and the role of social networks in the adaptation of freshmen.

This article investigates whether the level of academics’ societal engagement (ASE) is higher or lower at universities with leading research university (LRU) status compared with institutions at lower status levels within vertically stratified systems. In a theory-based purposeful sampling, we studied the correlation of LRU-status and ASE in Canada and Germany (intra-academic competition-based status model) and Kazakhstan and Russia (state-assigned status model). In Canada and Germany, universities have self-organized LRU-status groupings, such as the U15. In Kazakhstan and Russia, the National Universities’ LRU-status was assigned by the state. In Russia and Germany, Excellence Initiatives blur status-assignation models. Survey data is provided by the cross-country study “Academic Profession in Knowledge Society (APIKS)”. We find that techno-commercial ASE is only positively correlated with LRU-status in countries with state-assigned status groupings. Dissemination ASE is not correlated to LRU-status. Negative correlations between dissemination ASE and LRU-status are found in Canada. The results show that societal recognition (captured by industry, ministry, etc. grants) and LRU-status run in parallel in Russia and in Kazakhstan. In comparison with Russia, societal recognition is a distinct mechanism in Germany, which is not triggered by LRU-status. In Canada, ASE is mainly correlated with individual (status) determinants.

This study estimates empirically derived guidelines for effect size interpretation for research in social psychology overall and subdisciplines within social psychology, based on analysis of the true distributions of the two types of effect size measures widely used in social psychology (correlation coefficient and standardized mean differences). Analysis of empirically derived distributions of 12,170 correlation coefficients and 6,447 Cohen’s d statistics extracted from studies included in 134 published meta-analyses revealed that the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles corresponded to correlation coefficient values of 0.12, 0.24, and 0.41 and to Cohen’s d values of 0.15, 0.36, and 0.65 respectively. The analysis suggests that the widely used Cohen’s guidelines tend to overestimate medium and large effect sizes. Empirically derived effect size distributions in social psychology overall and subdisciplines can be used both for effect size interpretation and for sample size planning when other information about effect size is not available.

The study focuses on the issue of gender discrimination in pay among university faculty in Russia, a country with an exceptionally high share of female faculty in higher education. Using a comprehensive and nationally representative survey of university faculty, we found that although women in academia earn considerably less than men, gender inequality among university faculty is lower than in the non‐academic sector. The study shows that gender differences in pay can be mainly explained by vertical gender segregation: women are less likely to achieve senior positions in the university hierarchy, which brings a high wage premium. Another explanation is horizontal segregation, when there is a prevalence of male faculty in Moscow‐based universities, which provide a considerable wage premium compared to regional ones. A decomposition of the gender wage gap shows that slightly more than half of it can be explained by observable factors, while the rest can be attributed to discrimination and unobservable characteristics. Within the unexplained part the major part can be attributed to favoritism towards men and the minor part to discrimination against women. We found some evidence that faculty in research universities, which actively implement performance‐related pay, experience less gender inequality.

Structure of academic research in a particular country is directly linked with the social, economic and political institutions that exist in that country. One of the major characteristics of such structure nowadays is the role and scope of international collaboration. Development of science in particular countries can be significantly determined by the type of scientific activity with the other countries. In presented work we analyse international collaboration of post-soviet countries in dynamics. Post-Soviet region has several features, which make it a unique unit for analysis of the scientific structure and collaboration.

This paper evaluates the impact on dropout rates of a policy change in Mexico that eliminates grade retention for all first to third-grade students, causing a sharp reduction in repetition rates. I use a 12-year panel of schools to exploit such variation and estimate Difference-in-Difference models showing an average decrease in dropout rates of 30%. However, this effect is concentrated in wealthier schools, suggesting that social promotion alone is not enough to offset the influence of socioeconomic factors on school attainment. Further evidence shows that eliminating the 'threat' of grade repetition did not reduce average students' performance in standardized tests.

We use a statistical micro matching procedure to obtain a synthetic dataset to investigate the risk of fuel poverty in small areas. Specifically, we link 19,174 homes with Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) in the Italian province of Treviso with information - from the General Census of Population and Housing and Household Budget Survey - about the socio-economic features of the families that most likely inhabit them. Based on this original dataset, we find that poor housing is as important as low income and the use of natural gas in determining fuel poverty. In particular, the risk of fuel poverty is increased by i) the energy inefficiency of the home; ii) the size of the home in relation to household size; iii) the lower total household expenditure. Conversely, the risk decreases when the main heating is natural gas and/or the home is endowed with renewable energy sources.

Our results show that information in EPCs, matched at the micro level with the socio-economic data usually available from administrative sources or surveys, can be used to identify - on the one hand - the individual households and the municipal areas risking fuel poverty, and - on the other - the most effective policy options to tackle the phenomenon.

In this paper, we study a model in which a policy is chosen by a group of people through the formation of a committee. Attending the committee is costly, and each person decides whether to take part in it or not. Our work complements Osborne, Rosenthal and Turner (2000) since we allow various types of costs. We work with the mean compromise function, and we do not restrict the distribution of the favourite policy of the group members. Under these assumptions, we establish the existence of pure Nash equilibrium and show that, in comparison to the case of the median compromise function, the outcome of the committee’s work is less random and is not likely to be extreme. In the case of constant costs of participation, we show that when the costs increase, the size of the equilibrium committee decreases and the spread of the outcomes increases.

Development of mineral (mostly hydrocarbon) resources has shaped the social and economic dynamics of Siberia1 and of the Russian Arctic Zone for a long time. The conditions of such development in the upstream oil and gas sector (OGS)2 get increasingly more complicated, enhancing the need for new knowledge and technologies, as well as the role of cooperation among various companies with their special practices and advantages. The patenting activity is a useful indicator here. The oil- and gas-related patenting tends now to be concentrated in capital agglomerations (Moscow, St. Petersburg) and in the Republic of Tatarstan. This process is reinforced by a declining role of cities in Siberia and the Arctic Zone that used to be focal points of local knowledge and competences. The stronger concentration of patenting activity in the metropolitan areas stems to a large degree from the availability of highly qualified personnel, the overall high quality and intensity of research and development (R&D), and the companies’ policies of locating their technology centers in these cities. This situation conforms to the global trend (in our case, at the level of subnational regions) toward a spatial concentration of R&D activities in large companies and R&D centers located in agglomerations.

This paper evaluates the determinants of the value of investment in higher education (absolute expected returns from higher education) among students of Russian universities, accounting for variations in the socio‐economic development of different Russian regions. Based on the longitudinal study, ‘Trajectories in Education and Careers’, it shows that the average salary in a region is positively related to the individual estimates of expected salaries after graduation. In general, the results correspond to human capital theory, and confirm the rationality of students’ salary expectations. The expected salary shortly after graduation from university is positively related to the academic achievement demonstrated in the university entrance exam (the Unified State Exam, or USE), full‐time study and prior work experience. Male students expect to receive higher salaries compared to female students. Students who study for free expect lower salaries compared to those students who cover their tuition costs. Indirect influence (through USE results) of the characteristics of students’ schools and of their parents’ education on expected salary was found. In addition, we discovered a direct and indirect relationship between family income and expected salaries after university graduation.

This paper evaluates the design of current contractual incentive mechanisms in Russian universities after recent significant contractual reforms in the national academic sector. We employ the theoretical framework of incentive contracts in order to identify and assess performance measures of university faculty determining the total income received from teaching, research and administrative duties. We show that for the entire sample, faculty salary is positively associated with publication activity. Teaching is significant only for the entire sample, but not significant for research-oriented universities and HEIs with no special status. Administrative duties (expressed in the position held) are positively related to faculty pay: the largest effect is for rectors and vice-rectors, but for deans and heads of departments or laboratories the effect is also strong. Heads of universities and structural units receive a significant bonus for their administrative position. For research-oriented universities the largest effect in publication activity is for the number of papers in high ranking journals. In universities with no research status we discovered a significant gender gap: the male faculty earn more than their female colleagues. There is a positive linear relationship between salary and seniority for the entire sample and in universities with no special status.

The Russian University Excellence Initiative (Project 5-100) was initiated by the Government in 2013 to strengthen the positions of leading Russian universities at the global academic market (passive into active). We estimate the effect of this project on university publication activity with a special focus on the changes in the research output structure expressed in changes of quality and collaboration patterns. To do so, we use an econometric analysis of longitudinal data applying a linear growth model with mixed effects, with different characteristics of the research output as dependent variables. The dynamics of research collaborations were examined through university affiliations. We demonstrate that there is a significant positive effect of Project 5-100 on quantitative university research performance. That is, participating universities demonstrate a substantial, steady increase in publications measured in total numbers and per capita. We also show that the project has had a positive effect on publications in highest and lowest quality journals as well as on multi-authored publications. Participating universities have increased the number of publications (especially in high-quality journals) written in co-authorship with other organizations.