Most people believe that rich natural resources make a country rich. Fertile lands and abundant mineral wealth are seen as a natural endowment, available to support an abundant life. They also give a ready-made advantage in trade, since food, timber, metals, and energy are universal means to life. Even today many countries prohibit private ownership … Continue reading Can Russia escape the resources curse?

It is right that Globalist should notice the death of Ronald Reagan last weekend. For Reagan, together with Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher, was the architect of globalization. In its broadest sense, globalization means a growing consciousness of the world as a single unit. This has both an economic and a political aspect. The economist Jagdish … Continue reading What Russians can learn from Ronald Reagan

Western opinion has been outraged by the revelation of torture by US forces of Iraqi prisoners. Photographs and videos shown to Congress (and partly reproduced in Western media) showed American soldiers at Abu Ghraib Prison sexually assaulting Iraqis and laughing over mutilated and abused bodies. Now President Bush has promised to demolish this notorious prison, … Continue reading Torture and Abu Ghraib

Every society should be subject to the rule of law. This is not the same as rule by lawyers. In its worship of law, the United States is both an example and a warning. In Russia, the rule of law has come to mean protection of property rights. This is understandable, since private property was … Continue reading The American business model part 3: the role of lawyers

Once upon a time, business depended on trust. You trusted your partner or supplier not to cheat you. Why? Because you knew each other. Deals were verbal understandings: a man’s word was his bond. It was care for his reputation that kept the businessman honest: if he was known to cheat, he was finished. It … Continue reading The American business model part 2: Transparency

Russian business has emerged from its semi-criminal, post-Communist origins: already films like Oligarch and Brigada look like elegies for a vanished past. Robber barons, grown rich on stolen state assets, talk the language of corporate responsibility; their children study ethics at American business schools. America is the model, because it is the most successful economy … Continue reading The American business model part 1: Corporate Governance

Put together a government with too little money and a private sector with too much money and you have the making of Public/ Private Partnership. In Russia today, government revenue comes to 19.3% of official GDP, or $85bn. If the black economy (estimated at about 40 per cent) is added on, government revenue comes to … Continue reading Russia should use PFIs to rebuild its public services