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Roosevelt, Keynes, and Great Depression

TERRA ECONOMICUS, , Vol. 11 (no. 4.1),
p. 36-43

The article is a try to analyze if there were any interconnection between the “New Deal” reforms and Keynes’ views. This interconnection was indeed, besides some essential contradictions between Keynes’ and Roosevelt’s interpretation of technics to implement reforms and methods of recovery. Special attention is paid to analysis of advice and recommendations regarding USA overcoming the depression, which Keynes provided in his letters to Roosevelt. These letters can be treated as guidelines to implement theoretical issues Keynes’ “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”. And in spite of the fact that it has passed eighty years since Open letter from J.M. Keynes to Roosevelt and more than seventy years since his second (private) letter, problems analyzed in these letters and, what is really important, suggestions to solve for them are still up-to-date.

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Institutional change in the peripheral regions: The role of the civil institutions

TERRA ECONOMICUS, , Vol. 11 (no. 4.1),
p. 12-35

Radical socio-economic reforms in post-Soviet Russia provided rich factual material for the studies of institutional change. Russian economic order is characterized by heterogeneity of economic and institutional development of the regions, especially concerning the difference between the central regions and the peripheral ones. The study of institutional change can rely on synthesis of new institutional economic theory (namely, Douglas North’s approach) and original (old) one. Transition from a natural state to an open access order depends in many respects both on the actions of special interest groups and on the quality of a social capital. In peripheral regions of the North-Caucasian Federal District, the quality of a social capital and an institutional system is largely determined by the dominance of ceremonial values. In modern economic orders, the role of the state changes in quantitative as well as in qualitative aspects. This, in turn, emphasizes policy aimed at accumulation of human capital, creation of impersonal social networks, postindustrial form of solidarity and expansion of instrumental values. If implemented at the federal and regional levels, such a policy set the vector of change for civil institutions modernization in the peripheral regions.

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European liberalism and Russian economy – drama of unrequited love?

TERRA ECONOMICUS, , Vol. 11 (no. 4.1),
p. 6-11

European liberalism – the ancestor of all subsequent liberal ideas – has faced hard resistance in Russia; as a result, the impression that liberalism is the main enemy of modern Russian society may appear. Moreover, revelation of explicit and imaginary defects of liberalism going with high-intensity emotions – at times on the verge of hysteria – seems to be so acute that one might exclaim: «Hannibal at the gates!» Meanwhile, there are no reasons for such an intentional and, therefore, deliberate excitement. Why?

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