HSE Launches Two International Laboratories together with NES and Skolkovo
The HSE will study Russia’s economic history together with colleagues from the New Economic School (NES). The project with Skolkovo will address problems of law and social development in the contemporary world. International researchers will be involved in both laboratories.
The International Laboratory of Russian Economic History has been established by the HSE together with its old partner – the New Economic School. This is not the first joint project between the two universities: the HSE/NES Bachelor of Arts Programme has existed for several years now. The new laboratory will be headed by Simeon Djankov, NES Rector and former Minister of Finance of Bulgaria (he will be Academic Supervisor), and Andrey Markevich, professor at NES (he will be Head of the Laboratory).
‘Russia’s economic history offers rich opportunities to develop economic theory and carry out economic analysis’, Simeon Djankov believes. The country’s wide geography, for example, allows for regional comparisons and a better understanding of cause-and-effect relations in certain economic processes.
The laboratory will study Russian economic history over the last 300 years – from Catherine the Great to the most recent transitional period. One of its most interesting projects will reconstruct Russia’s historical GDP and gross regional products of its localities.
The other laboratory, the International Laboratory of Law and Development, which has been organized by the HSE and Skolkovo, is also not being created from scratch. In 2013, the HSE and Skolkovo prepared Russia’s first complex study of how the institution of intellectual property influences the country’s economic development. The study was presented at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
The laboratory will bring together economists, lawyers, sociologists, and political scientists.
The HSE’s Joint Department with the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service at the Faculty of Law will be a partner of the new laboratory. The laboratory will launch several courses, one of which will be led by Harvard professor Roberto Unger, a renowned Brazilian researcher. Alexey Ivanov, Director of the Skolkovo Department of Legal Policy and Social Development, will head the laboratory, and Leopold Specht, a renowned Austrian lawyer, entrepreneur, and lector, will be its Academic Supervisor.
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