Nonuniform Development of Municipalities
The paper is focused on uneven development of municipalities in Russia. A feasible method of assessing inequality of local development within regions is suggested and applied to four Russian regions. The analysis shows that in the late 1990s constant increase in inequality was observed, based on constructed municipal development/welfare indicators. Economic growth in that period had an uneven impact and did not create additional development opportunities for weak and economically stagnated municipalities.
Fiscal federalism and regional performance in Russia
Sound regional policies are essential for balanced and sustained economic growth. The interaction of federal and regional policies with cross-regional structural differences affects human and physical capital formation, the business climate, private investment, market depth, and competition. This paper summarizes the main elements of Russia’s fiscal federalism, describes the channels through which it operates, and assesses the effectiveness of regional transfers in reducing regional disparities. The results suggest that federal transfers to regions contributed to reducing disparities arising from heterogeneous regional tax bases and fiscal revenues. This allowed regions with initially lower per capita income to increase human and physical capital at higher rates. There is little evidence for transfers contributing to increased cross-regional growth synchronization. The results also suggest that federal transfers did not significantly improve regional fiscal sustainability, a conclusion that is supported by the lack of convergence in per capita real income across Russian regions in the last 15 years.
A Hopewellian Burial Site in the Lower Republican Valley, Kansas
The senior author has for a number of years worked on the problem of the numerous and virtually unknown burial sites on the bluffs bordering the valley of the Republican River in Geary and Clay Counties, Kansas. This work has been a matter of some urgency, owing to the prevalence of unsystematic amateur excavation on the more prominent stone cairns found in the area. Fortunately, the complete excavation of the larger cairns involves too much labor for the merely curious, and it has often been possible to salvage material and information despite disturbance.