The article presents an analysis of the current situation 12 years after the transfer in 2013 of academic institutions first to the Federal Agency for Scientific Organisations (FANO) and then to the

Ministry of Science and Higher Education, which led to the Russian Academy of Sciences effectively losing its status as a self-governing civil society organization, which affected the authority of the RAS. The focus is on researching current problems in the activities of the RAS's economic institutions and related copyright issues. In the context of seeking answers to questions related to scientific activity and the dissemination of knowledge, the opinion of professional economists is presented, obtained because of an online sociological survey conducted because of the NEA information system. An important feature of the dissemination of knowledge is conditioned by issues of intellectual property and copyright. The emergence of many pseudo-works and objects with a low level of creativity also affects the market for the dissemination of knowledge. In the context of a journal monopoly established for scientometric purposes, the models of relations between scientists and publishers today are distorted compared to fundamental legal approaches that traditionally give authors power over the results of their work, the right to inviolability and the right to remuneration. The use of new technologies in scientific activity carries both advantages and risks. Neural networks greatly simplify some routine operations, thus being an effective tool for intellectual work at certain stages of research. On the other hand, there is a possibility that the results of human reasoning will be replaced by conclusions generated by an algorithm based on the principles of word frequency and not free from flaws. From the point of view of copyright, the issues of ‘input’ and ‘output’ remain unresolved: to what extent is the use of protected works for machine learning legal, and who should own the rights to the generated content?

This paper examines the mechanisms by which uncertainty influences economic activity. It describes the channels through which uncertainty exerts both a negative influence – the real options effect, the financial channel, and reduced consumer spending – and a positive influence—growth options and the Oi-Hartman-Abel effect. Aspects of the real options mechanism, such as companies' wait-and-see behavior and the sunk costs associated with real investment and hiring, necessitate adjustments to the traditional approach to evaluating investment projects. In addition to the negative impact of uncertainty on investment, hiring, and employment, the real options channel can lead to a lower sensitivity of economic agents to changes in the economic environment, and, consequently, to lower economic policy effectiveness. The financial channel of uncertainty is associated with financial frictions and increased financing costs due to an increase in the risk premium, which amplify the real impact of uncertainty shocks. This amplifying effect can be quantified using the financial uncertainty multiplier. A decline in consumer spending has a negative impact on aggregate demand in the short term and, if prices and interest rates are insufficiently flexible, may lead to a decline in aggregate output. On the other hand, according to the growth options mechanism, high uncertainty can stimulate increased investment, particularly in technology- and capital-intensive companies, since uncertainty increases the size of potential gains. Also, under the Oi-Hartman-Abel effect, in the case of a firm's profit being convexly dependent on demand or costs, an increase in uncertainty regarding these variables can lead to an increase in expected benefits, which creates incentives for expansionary behavior. The main difficulty in the interaction between the negative and positive effects of uncertainty is determining the significance of each individual transmission mechanism. A review of studies determining the prevailing effect is provided, the majority of which confirm the negative aggregate impact of uncertainty shocks.

This article examines the role of culture in economic development from the perspective of institutional economics, which defines culture as a set of values and behavioral attitudes, with any member of society acting as a guarantor. Including culture as an informal institution allows for its organic inclusion as a component of institutional reforms, where informal rules are subject to change. Analyzing the latest theoretical and empirical work in this area, the authors operationalize cultural transformation as an independent tool for institutional design. Two main directions of cultural reforms are described: reducing transaction costs, improving coordination, and increasing the effectiveness of formal rules. The article draws on works devoted to norm-nudging and analyzing the impact of norm density on reform outcomes. Drawing on institutional theory and interdisciplinary research on norms and values, a set of cultural transformation tools is developed, along with a proposed classification and selection mechanism based on norm transmission channels and levels of social interaction. Potential failures in the design of cultural reforms are separately considered, and mechanisms for their prevention are proposed. An innovative method for gradually changing values and behavioral attitudes is proposed, based on norm density as a design parameter for cultural design. The authors not only formulate the theoretical framework for the approach but also develop a methodological foundation for empirically assessing the results of norm reform. The selection of subsystems for cultural change and norm density parameters are substantiated. The article develops a norm density index as a key parameter for cultural design methodology. Particular attention is paid to the risks and potential limitations, as well as the practical potential of C-NUDGE modeling. The results are relevant to reform designers, civil servants, and researchers in sociocultural economics.

The article examines the potential of applying the science studies approaches of T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos to describing the development of economic science. First, an attempt is made to systematize approaches to analyzing economic theory as a science by identifying three approaches: science-based, narrative (postmodernist), and sociological approaches. Given that mainstream economics is often presented as a kind of social physics, further analysis is focused on T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos, whose approaches are considered more suited to describing the exact sciences than the social disciplines. The development of science appears to be a nonlinear process: either an abrupt paradigm shift or competition between research programs with different hard cores. Applying Kuhn’s lens can help one to identify several scientific revolutions in economics: the marginalist revolution and the emergence of macroeconomics. In the author’s opinion, the credibility revolution is not a revolution from Kuhn’s perspective, since it affects certain methodological issues of proving existence of cause-and-effect relationships of limited application. Despite this, I. Lakatos’s approach, in the author’s opinion, is more justified: it is difficult to believe that a common paradigm in economics exists at any given point in time. It is worth acknowledging the significant shortcomings of both scientific frameworks: the ambiguity of key definitions; a reliance on retrospective analysis without a prospective view of the future. According to the author, these shortcomings justify the usage of other approaches to analyzing the development of science.

The ageing of populations and the increasing imbalance between the income and liabilities of pension systems have long been topics of concern among economists. This study focuses on several key factors that fundamentally undermine the prospects for private solutions to old-age savings within the framework of the welfare state: inflation, rising investment risks (especially due to property depreciation), and institutional barriers. The problem of population ageing is considered separately and shown not to be a “natural disaster,” but rather a phenomenon influenced by the policies and actions of the welfare state itself. While technically feasible solutions exist, their implementation appears politically impractical—at least under normal circumstances. However, in situations of acute crisis, such political obstacles may rapidly and unexpectedly disappear.

The article, a follow up of our previous research projects, considers the practical implications of the life-cycle hypothesis by F. Modigliani for the institutional design of the program of Targeted housing capital for the Russian elderly. The program is designed as socially oriented monetization vehicle for extensive housing assets of Russia’s elderly households enabling them to cover costs of expensive healthcare and social services wherever public financing is not available. The paper explores the possible role of development institutions, digital financial technologies, mitigation of social, demographic, legal, and financial risks, long-term sustainability of the program, and potential for scaling up.

This paper examines G. Becker's hypothesis on the direct relationship between the duration of education and income levels in national economies over the period 2000–2023. Overall, the classical hypothesis is fully confirmed (correlation coefficients of 0.782 for GDP per capita at current prices and 0.8 for constant prices). However, a certain deflation occurred during the period under review, which should have negatively impacted the relationship under consideration. When dividing countries into four separate income groups (rich, above the global average, below the global average, and poor), as used in World Bank statistics, it turned out that for rich countries, the relationship between the duration of education and income is absent (<0), while for upper-middle-income countries, it is relatively significant, and for lower-middle-income countries, it is significant. For poor countries, this relationship weakens, but remains significant. Thus, investments in education exhibit diminishing returns, well known in microeconomics, which manifest themselves at high income levels and, accordingly, at a sufficiently long duration of education (and the transition to mass higher education). This trend, however, may also be linked to migration flows of educated workers from relatively poor countries to rich countries.

In the second half of the 1950s in China were debates about the shortcomings of the economic education system established according to the Soviet model. Some professional economists criticized the postulates of Marxist political economy and called for the use of useful components of Western economics. They considered the Soviet version of Marxism unsuitable for solving China’s practical problems, pointed out the low level and absence of theoretical achievements of economic science in the USSR, and called on the authorities to ease the ideological and educational pressure on the economic community. The supporters of this viewpoint were labeled “rightists” dreaming about restoring capitalism in China, and the Chinese interpretations of Malthusianism and the theory of interest were criticized. Marxists blamed the Soviet educational model for dogmatism and disconnection from Chinese reality; its influence served as explanation of teachers’ one-sided attention to foreign economic history with insufficient interest in current issues of the development of the PRC. The recommendations to fill the courses with Chinese materials, to rethink the template of the Soviet political economy textbook, to strengthen the class character of the education, and to pay more attention to exposing “reactionary” economic theories came to the fore. The disputes of 1957–1958 enhanced the line of bringing economic theory closer to practice, popularizing Marxist political economy, and combining the political training with professional education. The main direction of changes was the Sinicization of the Soviet system of economic education without completely rejecting it. The intensification of ideological criticism in the field of economic science, along with the active promotion of political economy among the masses, has led to simplification of the interpretation of theoretical issues.

It is generally accepted that the basis of social and legal stability in any society is a consensus on virtue — the fundamental values of proper behavior, ways of maintaining and reproducing them. And, conversely, the destruction of this consensus is a sign of the loss of stability and divergence of positions of social institutions, groups and professional communities in understanding and applying norms and sanctions for their violation. This schematic representation poorly explains the parameters of the moral crisis of the era of globalization: the reasons for the loss of the meaning of the concept of virtue as the basis of the moral universe of humanity; the rejection of universal moral standards previously supported by religion or ideology, the growing conflict of their interpretations in different cultures, confessional and ethnic communities, the confrontation of value hierarchies within national cultures and individual groups, and most importantly - the lack of common moral guidelines of what to strive for. In these conditions, the dominant global trend has become the appeal to the codification of norms of so-called “pragmatic ethics” – the development of various codes of proper behavior for individual social and professional groups, which in this way seek to express their identity, functions and place in the dynamics of changes in the social hierarchy. This general fashion for the creation of ethical codes has captured post-Soviet Russia and is considered almost a panacea for moral distortions and the basis for effective social regulation. Meanwhile, the codification of ethical standards of all social subcultures without exception means a tacit recognition of both their insurmountable contradictions and that part of them that does not share conventional standards of virtue or clearly rebels against them. On this basis, the phenomenon of moral anomie (that is, the destruction of the entire normative system) and the justification of non-conformist and immoral behavior arises. What should be the parameters and limits of its acceptance in a democratic society, and most importantly - who sets them? This range of problems becomes the subject of analysis for the first time in this article, based on the entire corpus of the latest ethical codes of marginal communities in modern Russia.

This article is devoted to the study of the world of democratic governance in the institutional paradigm. It presents a structuring of the world of democratic governance based on religion.  It is determined that Christianity is the dominant religion, with the majority of citizens in more than 85% of the world's countries belonging to various Christian denominations. At the same time, in the world of democratic governance, approximately 90% of countries are secular in accordance with their constitutions. In eight countries, Christian denominations are established as state religions. It is shown that the countries of the world with democratic governance are unevenly distributed across geographical regions. More than three-quarters of all countries with democratic governance are concentrated in America, Europe, and Oceania, while less than a quarter of such countries are located in Asia and Africa. The results of the analysis show that in ~70% of the world's democratic states, parliamentary forms of government are in place, and in ~30% of such states, forms of government such as presidential, presidential-parliamentary, and parliamentary-presidential republics are established. A typology of democratic states is presented. It is shown that the world of democratic rule includes ~ 80% free states and ~ 20% partially free states. In twenty-eight free states, all political and state orders of polyarchic democracy are implemented at a high level. In seven partially free states, a regime of feckless pluralism is in place, in which there is real changeability of ruling political actors, but key problems of the state are not resolved. In six states of the world of democratic rule, there is a tendency toward the formation of a regime of dominant power, which can lead to an authoritarian rollback and the transformation of these states into undemocratic ones.

The article contains analysis of the programs of economic reforms developed in the USSR and Russia in 1984-1992. Early programs were based mainly on the experience of reforms in Yugoslavia and Hungary and assumed gradual introduction of market mechanisms while preserving for time being Soviet political system.However, the political liberalization, which accompanied the “perestroika” process and the rapid growth of fiscal imbalances, led to the revision of the concept of phased transition to market in favor of radical and fairly rapid economic reforms, which was reflected in the economic program “ 500 days”. In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union a group of young economists led by Yegor Gaidar proposed a program of market transformation, which was launched early in 1992. Despite some successes in the implementation of the program, it nevertheless failed in its main direction: financial stabilization was not carried out and the country entered a protracted period of high inflation.

The cost of medical treatment is increasing worldwide due to population growth, aging, the spread of chronic diseases, expanded access to healthcare, and the rising cost of technologies and pharmaceuticals. Against this backdrop, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly important. AI is used in diagnostics, drug development, surgery, administrative processes, rehabilitation, personalized treatment, and telemedicine. It accelerates processes, reduces costs, and improves the accuracy and quality of care. However, its use is subject to debate. The aim of this study is to identify the benefits and risks of using AI in healthcare based on an analysis of publications in Russian and English. It has been established that the introduction of AI into healthcare provides various medical benefits (decision support, personalized treatment, disease prediction, improved surgical accuracy, mental health assistance), as well as economic and social advantages (cost reduction, increased accessibility, automation of tasks, faster diagnostics, expansion of patient capabilities through wearable devices). The risks of AI can be grouped into ethical and policy-legal risks (possible errors and lack of accountability, loss of empathy, excessive dependence on AI, threats to privacy and national security, lack of legal frameworks and regulatory standards), socio-economic risks (high implementation costs, the risk of increasing inequality and the digital divide, resistance from doctors and patients), and technological risks (limited and biased data, insufficient transparency and reliability of models, difficulties in integrating AI into clinical practice). Thus, AI has enormous potential in healthcare, but its implementation is associated with serious challenges. For now, the risks predominate; therefore, its use should be gradual, with clear oversight and well-defined ethical and legal frameworks.