February 2022

Russian actions vs. Ukraine have European investors on alert

Geopolitical conflict between Russia and Ukraine is making institutional investors in Europe nervous, with some pension funds reducing their Russian holdings, and others watching closely. Read also Investors, governments act on Russia’s escalation in Ukraine The political situation that has been brewing since late 2021 escalated dramatically Feb. 24, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine. That prompted other countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. to impose increasingly strict sanctions against Russia, and the prospect of more from Canada, Japan and Australia. European...

Investors, governments act on Russia’s escalation in Ukraine

AkademikerPension, Gentofte, Denmark, is halting some Russian investments as the situation with Ukraine escalates, the pension fund said in a statement Tuesday. The evolving situation in Ukraine prompted several government moves. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson informed Parliament Tuesday that sanctions will be imposed on five Russian banks and three high-net-wealth individuals. Mr. Johnson described it as "the first tranche" of sanctions. U.S. President Joe Biden announced Tuesday the U.S. is imposing sanctions targeting Russia’s sale of sovereign debt abroad...

Danish pension scheme halts Russian investments

Danish pension fund AkademikerPension will immediately halt new investments in Russian assets after President Vladimir Putin recognised Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as independent, it said on Tuesday. The $23 billion fund said it would stop new investments in Russian government bonds and companies where the Russian state owns stakes of more than 50%. "Putin's formal recognition of the two separatist republics is a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty, which is a violation of international law. And it is also a...

July 2021

The Informal Economy and Economic Growth of Russia

By Minhyeon Jeong The size of the Russian informal economy has attenuated since 2014. However, there are a host of workers involved in economic exercises in the informal sector, and a handful of industries seems to rely on the informal economy too-much intensively. This manuscript takes a brief look at several issues going around the concept of the informal economy, then overviews the Russian informal economy and foresees its growth implications. Source: SSRN 258 views

April 2021

Russian lawmakers call for lower pension age ahead of election

Russia's Just Russia party that supports President Vladimir Putin has introduced a bill to reverse a recent unpopular pension reform and lower retirement ages to their previous levels, RIA news agency quoted the party leader as saying on Wednesday. Read also Japan approves law raising retirement age to 70 Putin, who once promised to never raise the retirement age, approved a gradual pension age increase in October 2018 despite mass street protests and public discontent as Russia sought ways to relieve...

August 2019

The Effect of Pension Growth on the Labor Force Participation of Pensioners in Russia

By Victor Lyashok This paper examines the impact of the 34% increase in pensions in Russia at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 on the labor market participation of pensioners. Several particular features of the pension system in Russia allow us to estimate the net effect of income from such a reform. For evaluation, we used a method combining difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity methods. The results showed that real pension growth by a third reduced labor...

July 2019

Pension fund left thousands of Russians without pensions

The Pension Fund of the Russian Federation did not include part of the pension to 170.5 thousand Russians, Life reports. Refusal to pay a pension is most often associated with informal employment, in which the employer did not make contributions to the Pension Fund. Another reason for the shortfall in payments is the loss of data on work experience. Due to legal illiteracy, people often make mistakes themselves - they submit applications for the accrual of fee ahead of time, or they...

February 2019

Pension Funds with Automatic Enrollment Schemes: Lessons for Emerging Economies

By Heinz P. Rudolph (The World Bank) Since the introduction of the KiwiSaver scheme in New Zealand in 2006, several countries have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, voluntary funded pension systems with automatic enrollment features. Since most of the literature has focused on countries with the common law tradition, including the United Kingdom and the United States, this note analyzes cases of countries with the civil code tradition, including Turkey, Poland, the Russian Federation, Chile, Brazil, and...

January 2019

Government Transfers, Work and Wellbeing: Evidence from the Russian Old-Age Pension

By Louise Grogan (University of Guelph - Department of Economics) & Fraser Summerfield (University of Aberdeen - Economics; CELMR; Rimini Center for Economic Analysis (RCEA)) This paper examines the impacts of a large and anticipated government transfer, the Russian old-age pension, on labor supply, home production and subjective wellbeing. The discontinuity in eligibility at pension age is exploited for inference. The 2006-2011 Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey is employed. Causal impacts differ across the sexes. Women reduce market work and appear...

October 2018

Russian Pensions and the Risk of War

Putin raises the retirement age, inflaming the street. Will he find an external enemy to shore up support? In the streets of more than 80 Russian cities, thousands of men and women have turned out for antigovernment rallies in the past few months. They aren’t the usual malcontents—the middle class, intelligentsia or students—but rabotyagi, blue-collar working stiffs. Both the cause of the rallies and their political context reveal the impoverishment of Russia and the fragility of Vladimir Putin’s regime, despite...