Andrey Shastitko

• Professor
• Head of Department at Lomonosov Moscow State University

Under the conditions of sanctions against the Russian Federation, foreign price indicators, which were previously widely used by both business and regulators, have become difficult to access and generally less relevant due to changes in the direction of commodity flows. There is a need for a national system of price indicators, the design of which...

The article presents comments on certain points of the Scientific and Technological Development Strategy of the Russian Federation (STD) and explains the priority in the scientific policy aimed at encouraging the formation of synthetic scientific disciplines in the light of the need to respond to large challenges, as well as at discussing the ethic...

The article shows that, along with technical restrictions on access to internet resources around the world, including due to the use of geo-blocking, new deglobalization factors have emerged associated with the spread of digital platforms and the creation of digital ecosystems. The effect of these factors is based on the exploitation of the bounded...

The authors give a broad overview of the rapidly changing state antimonopoly policy in recent years in connection with the message of the President of Russia to the Federal Assembly and reflect on the prospects for the introduction of the risk-based approach and the principle of economic evidence in both public administration and business administr...

Platform pricing may be connected to antitrust risks, which a company can face under excessive or predatory price scrutiny when the platform is recognized as dominant in the market. Since Federal Antitrust Service of Russia (FAS Russia) prefers price-cost comparison when studying excessive or predatory pricing, we suggest using tariff regulation ap...

Digital platforms, as a rule, offer their services to at least one of the parties without a monetary fee, but by charging another resource – information – in the form of personal information and digital footprints. Analysis mechanisms of collected information provide companies with hidden competitive power, which, on the one hand, allows them to in...

The article examines the possible reasons for the dominance of fundamentalism( in the form of Pigouvianism or market fundamentalism) over functionalism (Coasianism) in the practice of decision-making in economic policy. Continuing the study of the relationship between Coasianism, Pigouvianism and market fundamentalism, presented in previous works,...

The article continues to discuss options for the modernization of higher economic education in Russia, including those provisions that are presented in two articles: by A. Auzan, A. Maltsev and A. Kurdin (Voprosy Ekonomiki, 2023, No. 10) and by A. Buzgalin and A. Kolganov (Voprosy Ekonomiki, 2023, No. 11). Questions are formulated to clarify the po...

This article revisits approaches to regional development by exploring both previously proposed and new policy opportunities for regions facing the greatest challenges in adapting to emerging geo-economic conditions. This revision is based on the methodology of comparative analysis of discrete structural (institutional) alternatives – an essential c...

The article substantiates the content, format, and positioning in the curriculum of a new academic course on entrepreneurship theory and entrepreneurial activity regulation at the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University. We offer a specialized course as a tool to develop higher economic education in two directions. The first relat...

The authors evaluate prospects of a new quality of relations between the holders of economic expertise based on scientific research, attention to essential (including interdisciplinary) details and its beneficiaries in the field of political decision-making. We substantiate the necessity of finding a compromise between what is interesting to a rese...

During the political, economic instability and uncertainty, both the goals of economic regulation and the methods of decision-making are changing. Against the backdrop of changes in state policy, the need to ensure national security is becoming more acute, while there are still decision-making risks associated with the rent-seeking behavior of the...

In 2022 political issues made significant adjustments to individual economic plans of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Against this background, the idea of industrial regulation is gaining popularity again as a means to overcome the shocks that have arisen. However, how effective is such a mechanism for coordinating efforts to adapt...

Potential changes in economic science under the conditions of mobilization processes in the economy and society are considered. The main questions that arise before the scientific community because of these processes are formulated, options for answers to them are proposed, and the prospects for economic science in the new conditions are also indic...

Imbalances in law enforcement require some alternatives for an institutional response to challenges. Telecommunications is an example industry where technological changes in the environment condition the need to adjust approaches for implementing antitrust tools for competition protection. The article deals with the discussion regarding the choice...

Cooperation agreements between competitors can be an important tool for markets to adapt to external shocks, whether those are the consequences of a pandemic or economic sanctions. In this regard, the discussion of approaches to evaluating such agreements for admissibility from the point of view of antimonopoly legislation under current conditions...

The importance of digital ecosystems in the economy is growing rapidly as more and more companies and consumers are involved in their circuit. At the same time, the regulation relevance is growing too, as evidenced by many antitrust cases involving companies such as Yandex, Google, Microsoft, which constitute the core of the respective ecosystems....

Geographic market definition is an important element of antitrust enforcement in the framework of countering monopolistic activities and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) control. Incorrectly defined geographic market can lead to false conclusions about the state of competition. The main way to identify the geographic market is the SSNIP test, which,...

The analysis of the state of competition in commodity markets is formally regulated by Order No. 220 of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia dated April 28, 2010 “On Approval of the Procedure for Analyzing the State of Competition in the Commodity Market”, but in reality, the mechanical adherence to the norms of this document is not enough, s...

Could identical goods sold by the same company on the same territory and at the same time be attributed to different product markets? In our paper we take a closer look at the case of the wrought-steel wheel industry, which became the subject of an antitrust investigation initiated by the FAS Russia in 2020. During a shortage, one of the largest wr...

This article contains an analysis and assessment of digital evidences used by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation in anticompetitive agreement cases, such as an e-mails of the parties of agreements, electronic documents, equal IP or MAC address, and data from the Big Digital Cat parametric program. This article also contains...

Based on the idea of a positive relationship between the growth of scientific economic knowledge and economic development, through the prism of the types of discourse in which Russian researchers are involved, the issue of barriers to building an effective system of economic science management, which is necessary for evidence-based economic policy,...

Under sanctions, at the state level (in particular via the Russian antimonopoly authority) the idea of the need to prioritize supply to the domestic market is being promoted as an imperative for Russian manufacturers. The reverse side of the prioritization of the domestic market is the refusal to link prices under domestic contracts to foreign pric...

Credible commitments are the most important condition for contracts sustainability. The effects and ways of ensuring the commitments credibility are discussed in the new institutional economics and game theory. At the same time, there is a number of unresolved issues related to the microeconomic aspects of obligations’ reliability in contracts rega...

Economic forensic examination is a means of achieving a better balance of errors of the first and second kind in law enforcement, but in itself depends on the incentives and capabilities of judges to assess the sufficiency of the grounds for its appointment. The purpose of any forensic examination is to obtain by the court, for the purposes of the...

The article is aimed at ordering, in the first approximation, the subject field of the study, namely, structural alternatives for the reaction of Russian public authorities to the decision of foreign companies to withdraw their business from Russia. Approaches of the new institutional economics are used (especially in terms of comparative analysis...

The paper explains why, despite the publication of the original edition of the book in 2005, Eggertsson’s work is still relevant and why it should be studied not only by experts in institutional economics. The provisions of the research results on imperfect institutions are discussed, including the discussions of the institutional transformation of...

The paper reveals the characteristics of competing approaches — Pigouvian and Coasian — to identify the grounds for state regulation. We outline the connections between Pigouvian and Coasian approaches with the values and prospects for their advancement in the field of political decision-making in the context of demand for economic knowledge and th...

The article identifies the key problems of the development of innovative economics in Russia. One of the key and large-scale problems is the weak commercialization of innovations created with budget funds: there are many inventions, but few innovations. At present, there is also a problem of scientific migration in Russia: a significant number of s...

This article examines the institutional setting implemented by a fragmented industry to face a technologically and politically challenging environment. It does so through the lens of recent developments in new institutional economics building on the Williamsonian contributions about hybrid organizations and the Northian contributions about institut...

The main characteristics of approaches to the discussion of the sufficiency of grounds for the introduction / cancellation of state regulation due to the identification of failures in the price mechanism are revealed. The comparison of approaches is presented on the basis of the problem of externalities. In this regard, the provisions from the theo...

Recently, discussions about the validity of the Russian practice of establishing the facts of individual abuse of collective dominance have been escalating: many experts point to a contradiction between the meaning of collective dominance, in which a small number of companies have a joint dominant position, in connection with each other, and the po...

Criminal prosecution of monopolistic activities in the form of market cartelization is the most sensitive tool for individuals, which can have both a serious deterrent effect and limit behavior that is beneficial to public welfare. This paper discusses the theoretical aspects of the issue of choosing a regime of antitrust enforcement in connection...

The paper defines the features of the collective dominance institute in Russia as well as the relation between collective dominance and oligopoly in the spheres of law and economic theory. The article evaluates the grounds and consequences of the collective dominance legal norm application; it suggests an approach to examining the relation between...

Modern economic science is experiencing difficulties in solving theoretical and practical problems, including its inability to predict future economic crises, and, after their onset, the effective ways to overcome them. This is largely due to the fact that representatives of different theories have different assessments of the ongoing processes in...

Implementation of the import substitution strategy in Russia in some cases is associated with the risk of the state supporting technologically ineffective domestic producers, whose interests are taken into account in the course of industry regulation and antitrust. The article examines the problems of using the tools of antimonopoly policy (and its...

The article discusses possible reasons for the failure of Russia’s waste management industry reform and highlights the ownership blurring as a factor that may hinder the transition to a circular economy, which has been proposed as one of the outcomes of the reform. This study aims to address possible obstacles to transitioning to a circular economy...

The article provides an analysis of counterparties’ benefits and costs within the framework of regulatory contracts the object of which is structural prescriptions issued by the antimonopoly authority controlling mergers and acquisitions. The purpose of the study is to identify discrete institutional alternatives for creating credible commitments i...

The article aims to show how decisions taken by a government body can directly contradict the goals for which it is endowed with appropriate powers. The effect is demonstrated by a recent antitrust case against the mobile operator Tele2. The hypothesis of the study is that the regulator's decision finding an antitrust violation, based on an incorre...

Criminal prosecution of monopolistic activities in the form of market cartelization is the most sensitive instrument for individuals and can both have a serious deterrent effect and restrict behavior that is beneficial to the public welfare. The paper considers theoretical and economic aspects of choosing an antitrust enforcement regime in view of...

Digital antitrust is at the forefront of all expert discussions and is far from becoming an area of consensus among researchers. Moreover, the prescriptions for developed countries do not fit well the situation in developing countries, and namely in BRICS: where the violator of antitrust laws is based compared to national firms becomes an important...

Implementation of the ecosystem business model can not only bring significant gains to a company, but also entail additional risks, including those of violating antitrust laws. The article analyses the Apple Inc. ecosystem, which has recently become the subject of a number of complaints from independent software developers and of antitrust investig...

Telecom companies are a frequent target of antitrust investigations in Russia. In an industry where services tend to become more and more complex and companies actively invest in diversifying their businesses, the antitrust authority in most of its telecom cases has chosen to define markets narrowly, which increases antitrust risks for the companie...

Digital transformation has led to changes in business models of traditional players in the existing markets. What is more, new entrants and new markets appeared, in particular platforms and multisided markets. The emergence and rapid development of platforms are caused primarily by the existence of so called indirect network externalities. Regardin...

This article deals with the regulation of the natural gas sector in Russia through the lens of institutional economics. It proposes a framework in which ‘meso-institutions’ bridge the gap between the macro-institutions shaping the ‘rules of the game,’ with the Kremlin at the core, and the micro-layer within which firms operate. We argue that the sl...

Some promising areas of research into the effects of the coronavirus pandemic are outlined. Among them – reflection in the system of sanitary and epidemiological indicators and their numerical values of the characteristics of socio-economic systems; comparative analysis of discrete structural alternatives in the light of the choice of solutions to...

This paper is aimed at investigating the ways of overcoming imbalances concerning competition and industrial policies. The central principles of combining industrial and competition policies have been formulated on the basis of a discussion of challenges and opportunities for interaction in the field of industrial and competition policies in develo...

Why is it that in the history of mankind the economic prosperity of countries, and even over a relatively long time interval, is quite rare? Aсemoglu and Robinson (AR) proposed a fresh look at the problem in their new book “Narrow corridor: States, societies and the fate of freedom”. Here we examine the main elements of the conceptual framework in...

In the modern world, competition policy is an important part of global governance. Coordination of efforts between different countries is not an easy task, because the distribution of gains and losses from anticompetitive conducts is uneven across the globe. We identify joint interests of BRICS to influence international competition policy regime a...

The article analyses the economic aspects of the application of antitrust legislation in the context of abuse of dominant position prohibition (primarily in the form of setting excessive prices) in industries that are characterized by a complexity of services both on the production side and on the demand side. Evidence from several recent antitrust...

This article continues the discussion about the results and prospects of applying the institutional approach to the study of economic development, which was initiated by R. Kapeliushnikov (Voprosy Ekonomiki, 2019, No. 7—8). The focus is on the balance of interests and ideas in the light of economic growth, the question of the existence and protecti...

The authors analyse the environment and its current state of academic research in the field of economics formed in Russia. We considered the publication activity over the past six years of Russian economic, educational organisations as well as the results of the leading Russian universities in the QS and THE subject rankings. Further, we also revea...

The article deals with the problem of determining market boundaries for antitrust law enforcement in the field of telecommunications. An empirical approach has been proposed for determining the product boundaries of the market in the area of mass distribution of messages, taking into account the comparative characteristics of the types and methods...

The paper examines the approaches to antitrust market definition for a class of situations characterized by significant imbalances due to supply and demand shocks. The problem of error analysis in antitrust law results from the insufficient experience in using tools for market analysis in a state other than equilibrium. The research methodology inc...

The article discusses the foundations, opportunities and limitations of adjusting the conceptual framework of institutional analysis by replacing the pair “institutional environment — institutional agreements” with the triad “macro-, meso- and micro-institutions”. This study focuses on meso-institutions. It is expected that this concept is possible...

In many cases of competition law enforcement counterfeit goods are not included within the product-market boundaries on an equal basis with the original product. However, existing literature highlights that illegal copies should be included in market boundaries, since from the consumer's viewpoint counterfeit is a substitute of an original good. In...

The spread of digital technologies enhances the topicality of studying new ways of organizing the intercompany exchange of legally relevant documents. The article scrutinizes the linkage between contractual relationship, transaction management mechanisms and discrete institutional alternatives of document interchange. The methodological basis of th...

The goals of competition policy have been a subject of debate almost since its inception. Competition agencies in developing countries are tasked with a wider range of goals than their counterparts in developed countries due to specific traits of the economic and institutional environment of the former. Goal complementarity, path-dependence, compar...

The roundtable took place on May 18, 2018 within the International forum MARX—XXI in commemoration of Karl Marx 200th birth anniversary. The event gathered leading Russian economists representing Lomonosov Moscow State University, Higher School of Economics, Financial University, Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. The pa...

Reforms of natural monopolies need clear delineations between the industries where market mechanisms contribute to social welfare and those where the costs of a transition to a market economy outweigh the benefits. In this article, we emphasise the difficulty of finding the optimum modes of governance within industries as a whole. Using the tools o...

This paper is about the challenges that antitrust authorities face when dealing with bilateral monopolies. The curse of antitrust refers to traps threatening the efficient applicability of antitrust policies in these situations. Standard theories diverge about the attainability of equilibrium under bilateral monopolies but share skepticism about it...

The article offers a survey of some of the ideas of Karl Marx in the context of the subsequent development of the new institutional economic theory in the 20th - early 21st centuries. It discusses various aspects of the unity of the historical and the logical in Marx’s Capital in the light of various ways of combining the historical and the theoret...

The article proposes an approach to investigation of opportunities, conditions and restrictions of changes in production resource intensity as a correlate of institutional changes in the industry linked with technological innovations. Analysis of the large-diameter pipes industry demonstrates tight institutional restrictions (comparing with technol...

The existing practice of implementing antitrust law to bilateral monopolies in Russia shows signs of inconsistency. Traditional theoretical approaches differ in their estimations of the characteristics and attainability of equilibrium on such markets, but overall more or less converge on the idea of antitrust regulation of such markets to be unjust...

This paper addresses the comparative analysis of discrete institutional alternatives in organizing transactions among distinct economic entities. The theoretical framework for understanding this issue was introduced by Ronald Coase 80 years ago. Following this seminal contribution, a standard theoretical distinction now exists between the instituti...

The transfer of intellectual property rights (IPR) and associated relations are subject to regular antitrust policy in the developed economies, with some minor refinements. The application of antitrust policy to the same area in the developing countries is a question of controversy. Such economies as China and Russia apply explicit exceptions for I...

Modern economic literature fails to provide a clear demarcation line between the concepts of market power, bargaining power and countervailing buyer power. Partly this can be explained by methodological limitations of the existing approaches to analyzing these categories. But the issue cannot be limited to merely a theoretical debate, as the choice...

The opportunities and constraints for interpretation of the New institutional economics as a research program is demonstrated by authors on the basis of the description of the disciplinary area in terms of research programs in contrast to the paradigm approach to the explanation of the development of scientific knowledge. It is identified common ch...

The author discusses the significance of outcomes of economics achievements for social wellbeing growth from the perspective of institutions designing. There are many examples confirming the opportunity to use these theoretical results in applied issues of social and economic development. However, there are no guarantees that these results will be...

The article analyses the main features of the intellectual activity results market through the lens of the product boundaries definition. Frequently the pirated copy is not considered as a substitute for original products in legal cases. However, unlicensed computer programs should be included in the product market boundaries regardless of its lega...

This study operationalizes the concept of hostility tradition in antitrust as mentioned by Oliver Williamson and Ronald Coase through erroneous law enforcement effects. The antitrust agency may commit type I, not just type II, errors when evaluating an agreement in terms of cartels. Moreover, firms can compete in a standard way, collude or engage i...

Stagnation of the Russian economy lends a new urgency to the question of whether reserves of competition incentives can be used to overcome the current negative economic tendencies. The lowering of entry barriers is traditionally considered a universal instrument of promoting competition. However, lower entry barriers can be mistakenly associated w...

The paper deals with the comparative analysis of discrete institutional alternatives operationalized by referring to institutional design on different levels of interaction between economic agents and their groups. Theoretical differences between an institutional set of economic exchanges and an institutional boundary of exchanges has been accounte...

The authors propose an empirical analysis of the current situation in monotowns. The study questions the perceived seriousness of the ‘monotown problem’ as well as the actual challenges it presents. The authors use a cluster analysis to divide monotowns into groups for further structural comparison. The structural differences in the available datab...

The compatibility between the priorities of industrial policy, aimed at promoting sustainable development, and competition defense by means of antitrust law remains a question open for discussion. The paper demonstrates that it is the institutional environment that defines which characteristics of ecological externalities influence the possibility...

This study analyzes the incentives for process innovations under different conditions determined by the competition policy for intellectual property rights (IPR) and particular features of markets and technologies. Competition policy is defined by the presence or absence of compulsory licensing, markets are characterized by technological leadership...

This paper relates competition studies and views on competition policy within Austrian economics to the dynamic capabilities theory. The idea of interacting research programs in economics is used to provide the frame for reflecting on particular issues of competition, on the one hand, and (1) ignorance, (2) knowledge (including tacit knowledge), (3...

The paper reveals the basis and constraints for applying the discount of 1/8-th fines for a company that has violated the antitrust law, but previously introduced an antitrust compliance program. Here is an example of the following idea implementation: a company gets an opportunity for fines discounts in case of law violation if it elaborates and i...