- •Предисловие
- •Unit 1 What is it all about?
- •I. Answer the comprehension questions:
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English:
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations.
- •Russian Experience
- •In Search of Intellect and Wealth
- •1. Economic environment.
- •2. Economics.
- •3. Economy. Unit 2 Economics and Economy
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV.Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Gauging the True Size of Russia’s Economy
- •Russia No longer Among World Market’s Top Players
- •Unit 3 The Oil Price Shocks
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •World Experience
- •Cheap Oil! Good news for the world’s consumers, but bad news for struggling producers
- •More Money in Most Pockets
- •Income Distribution
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Shop assistance We’ve all heard of the New Rich in Russia, but what do they spend their money on? John Helmer digs into the latest consumer research and comes up with some unexpected answers.
- •Unit 5 The Role of the Market
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II. Vocabulary
- •III. Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •By Roy Medvedev
- •Unit 6 Demand, Supply, and the Market
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Citicorp Invests in Russia
- •Unit 7 What Do Governments Do?
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II. Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Russia Has Dropped Out of the Community of Developed Countries
- •Incomes and expenditures.
- •1. Transfer payments
- •2. Social security and unemployment benefits
- •3. Income tax
- •Unit 8 What Should Governments Do?
- •Most of the goods supplied by businesses and demanded by consumers are private goods
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice
- •Russian Experience
- •State Duma Rejects Welfare Package Again
- •Unit 9 Business Organization
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II. Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Common Profile of a Russian Enterprise
- •Unit 10 Market Structure and Imperfect Competition
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II. Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English:
- •IV. Situations and communication practice
- •Russian Experience
- •Russian Tobacco Manufacturers Lie Low
- •Unit 11 Factor Markets: Labour
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English:
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Recruitment in Russia: Still Climbing
- •Insufficient social integration.
- •Working Without Pay
- •Unit 12 Human capital
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •World Experience
- •Finding Opportunity in the Global Economy. By Bill Gates.
- •1. Human capital
- •2. Signalling and screening.
- •3. Pay differentials. Unit 13 Coping with Risk in Economic Life
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Reuters Eyes on Russia’s Risks
- •Unit 14 Taxes and Public Spending
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II. Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Taxes Higher in Russia Than Elsewhere
- •A Country Where People Pay Taxes
- •Unit 15 Money and Modern Banking
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Savings of “Very Rich” Families (Data of a quality interview)
- •The Battle of the Banks
- •The History of Russian Money (The ruble celebrates its 1000th birthday)
- •Unit 16
- •International Trade and Commercial Policy
- •I. Comprehension questions
- •II.Vocabulary
- •III.Translate from Russian into English
- •IV. Communicative practice. Situations
- •Russian Experience
- •Higher Excise on Imports
- •Contents
Russian Experience
1. Think and say:
a) Are economists in great demand in Russia today? Why?
b) Would you like to be a trained specialist in banking, finance, general economics, risk calculation, currency dealings, social welfare economics, marketing, real sector consulting, accounting? Explain your choice.
c) What do you think about the government in Russia? Are there many people able to pull the country out of the crisis? Do they have the expertise to conduct the reforms with minimal losses?
2. Give a short summary of the text. Find the key sentences. Mention the key ideas.
3. Say what it is “to be a creative economist”.
In Search of Intellect and Wealth
For a long time two schools of economic thought dominated the world scene: the Soviet-style and the free-market school, both of which were as dissimilar as physics and ballet. Of course there were some leading Soviet economists, but their knowledge is not relevant in today’s Russia.
With the free-market economy now prevailing in Russia and the kind of specialization required today, the Russian educational system is in acute need of trained lecturers in banking and finance rather than in general economics. For example, there is a demand for economic analysts specializing in risk calculation, and the whole country has just a few lecturers in currency dealings. Most educational establishments will soon run into difficulties for lack of such specialists.
The government administration needs both macro — and micro-economists, but macro-economists are particularly needed at the Finance and Economics Ministries, the Central Bank and the State Statistics Committee. There is a demand for 50 to 100 such specialists a year.
Around 2,000 specialists in different markets are also needed every year, and an equal number of social welfare economists are in demand. And there is a great need for lawyers with a knowledge of economics — today lawyers and economists fail to understand each other.
Over the next two years the real sector will have no particular demand for general economists, except for marketing specialists. Meanwhile independent consulting firms will continue to emerge, and the real-sector economists will be working there in anticipation of an industrial upsurge. When it comes, they will move to industrial plants, provided that they are offered competitive salaries.
So although several thousand specialists are needed every year, solvent demand remains low, amounting to several dozen vacancies. However, we have to start training such specialists for the long term. Training courses must be opened in the provinces, too, although this is both difficult and unprofitable for lecturers, who will get far better salaries in the capital. But Moscow alone cannot provide specialists for the whole country.
Some believe that the government’s economic team is incapable of pulling the country out of this crisis. The government did make quite a few mistakes and lacks the expertise to conduct the reforms with minimal losses, for example at the macroeconomic level. But there are no specialists with such expertise for the simple reason that macroeconomics of transitional economies is non-existent as a subject of study.
For all the distortions in the economy, there is no alternative to the government’s present economic team. For example, the Ministry of Economics has the strongest group of deputy ministers. But on the level of department heads little has changed since the days of the USSR’s State Planning Committee. Half of the medium-level managers have no idea what the aims of the economic reforms are, although they are qualified specialists in their fields. In other words, they have to be trained to be “creative” economists. But their training can take place only three or four years from now, when a new generation of economists arrive.
So the point today is not to ascertain who is better — Vasilyev or Petrov, Glazyev or Yasin. Top-level economists are few, and if they start staging political duels there is no telling which way the economy will go.
Key terms.