Moscow’s Pacification
Moscow’s homicide rate now lower than London’s.
International Comparisons
HBD
Национальный IQ в 2019 году
Карта среднего уровня IQ по странам мира на основе National IQ dataset v1.3.3. Показана NIQ – средняя оценка IQ тестов и результатов международных стандартизированных тестов. де можно найти самый надежный источник среднего уровня IQ по странам мира? Этот вопрос у меня часто спрашивают, поэтому пора написать окончательный ответ. Без сомнений, это является веб-сайт немецкого психометриста
Politics
Kettle, Meet Pot
“Corruption across EU ‘breathtaking’ – EU Commission” says a headline in the BBC. The Commissioner responsible for the report said that she believed the cost of corruption was “probably much higher” than the €120 billion (US$162 billion) the report estimates. And indeed that is probably correct because corruption within EU organs themselves was not included.
HBD
Preliminary Thoughts on TIMSS/PIRLS 2012
I had been meaning to post about this for a long time. Better late than never, I suppose. The TIMSS and PIRLS are international assessments of academic ability in math, science and literacy that are conducted once every four years. They are similar to the PISA tests, although the latter are less purely academically focused
Economy
Russia’s Economic “Stagnation” In Global Perspective: Continued
It is now a staple of “common wisdom” to such an extent that there is little point in digging up specific news items. Bound up in red tape and crushed by the weight of state regulations, the argument goes, the Russian economy is doomed to years of renewed Brezhnevite stagnation – with the government increasing
Demographics
Translation: Demographics in Russia and Germany
In a graphs-heavy blog post, German-Russian blogger A.S. Schmidt argues that with its far higher emigration rates and lower birth rates, Germany is now in a much bigger demographic crisis than Russia. Demographics in Russia and Germany I have long wanted to compare some of the demographic trends in Russia and Germany but, to be honest,
Economy
Russians Produce 7 Cars For Every 10 They Buy
One common trope about the Russian economy is that it has virtually no manufacturing to speak of and lives off “oil rents” that can collapse any day. Whiles there is a small nugget of truth to this assertion, but by and large it is simply false. It is true that a great chunk of Russian
Politics
What I Learned From Freedom House…
My latest for the US-Russia Experts Panel and VoR. In this latest Panel, Vlad Sobell asks us supposed Russia “experts” whether Freedom House’s “alarmist stance” towards Russia is justified. Well, what do YOU think? I don’t think you need to be an expert to answer this; it’s an elementary issue of common sense and face
Society
Russia’s Corruption In Comparative International Perspective
Continuing from my previous post (which focused mostly on trends), this one focuses exclusively on international comparisons as per the results of Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer survey of 2010-11. The graphs represent affirmative answers to the question of whether the respondent had paid a bribe in the past 12 months to each of 9
HBD
Antisocial Punishment: Why China Will Defeat Corruption, But Russia And The Arabs Won’t
One of the books I’ve been reading lately is Steven Pinker’s massive door-stopper The Better Angels of Our Nature. Incidentally, I found it a very interesting read with tons of cool factoids, although it could have done with a third of its text and a tiny fraction of its liberal sanctimonious. But that’s for the
Society
If Sunlight Is The Best Disinfectant, Why Is The Russian Mafia State Opening The Blinds?
My latest for the US-Russia.org Expert Discussion Panel. Also as usual it appears at Voice of Russia. The version printed here is a slightly longer one: There are already a lot of opinions on the topic of Russian corruption, and I see no pressing need to add more to that morass. I do however think it
Media
My Article For Komsomolskaya Pravda On Press Freedoms In Russia And The West
Here it is in Russian: Вверх-вниз по рейтингу свободы. This translation here is of a longer version at my Russian language blog. A version of it also appears on Voice of Russia: Press freedom – on both sides of the Information Curtain. Thanks to Alexei Pankin (who is a regular at Komsomolskaya) for making it happen – and
History
Putin’s Birthday, Birth Of A Legacy
The latest US-Russia.org Expert Discussion Panel focused on an assessment of Putin’s historical legacy, on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Here I try to answer whether history will see Putin as the “founder of a modern and successful Russia”, or as a tragic figure who threw away his chance of greatness to the “delusion of indispensability”:
HBD
Quantifying Future Time Orientation
In a 2010 paper on time preferences*, the authors Mei Wang et al. conducted an experiment in which participants could choose either $3400 now or $3800 a month later. Now I would choose the latter option but maybe it’s just because I’m intelligent and have been living in the West for quite a while. In
Media
Russian Journalists Are Far Safer Than Mexican Journalists, Ordinary Russians, And Their Own Counterparts Under Yeltsin
One of the most common tropes against Russia is that critical (independent, democratic, etc) journalists there are dying like flies, presumably because of the “culture of impunity” created by Putin or even on his express orders. It is rarely mentioned that the statistical chances of a Russian journalist dying by homicide is an order of