News

The 4^th International Economics Olympiad (IEO) has come to a close after taking place online in Latvia from July 21 to 1 August. The competition was organized by HSE University and the University of Latvia.

In Soviet times, relocation to northern monocities was seen as an attractive option, with high pay and good perks, along with a well-developed infrastructure, perceived as offsetting the harsh climate. The situation is different today, with some cities on the verge of vanishing into extinction. A prominent and rather striking example of this process is Vorkuta in the Komi Republic. A team of researchers from the HSE and Politecnico di Milano, having examined the progressive shrinkage of this once booming monocity, concluded that the case of Vorkuta could suggest effective approaches to managing urban depopulation in the Russian Arctic.

Yana Osman, a graduate of the bachelor’s degree programme in Journalism and the master’s degree programme in Management, now teaches at HSE University and works as a communications consultant at PR Inc. In this interview with Success Builder, Ms Osman explains how to find your superpower, why journalists make great PR agents who know how to get their materials published without paying a dime, and why you need to allow yourself everything in order to succeed in your profession.

The UN member states pledged to achieve 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 that are aimed at saving the planet’s resources and increasing overall well-being. One — Goal 7 — sets out to “ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.”

In its capacity as a venue for integrating Russian and international cross-cultural psychologists, the HSE Centre for Sociocultural Research has been researching the values of people in post-Soviet states and other countries for over a decade. Nadezhda Lebedeva, Director of the Centre and Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences, speaks about the leading world researchers working at the Centre, the transmission of values among adolescents and their psychological well-being, and the connection between creativity and the acceptance of cultural differences.

Nikolay Kuzin, a 2011 graduate of ICEF, is brand manager at Sanofi Pasteur (France), a company that has been manufacturing vaccines for many years and where he oversees the launch of new products in Eastern European markets. We spoke with Nikolay about how he combines the background in finance with the administrative responsibilities in his position, about the unique nature of French master’s programmes, about how long it really takes to develop a vaccine, and about why Europeans trust medical developments in their countries.

The stronger the functional brain connections, the less inclined someone is to punish others for unfair behaviour. This conclusion was reached by HSE researchers following a neuroimaging experiment. Their paper ‘Wired to punish? Electroencephalographic study of the resting-state neuronal oscillations underlying third-party punishment’ was published in the journal Neuroscience.

People with higher education enjoy higher salaries and are at considerably less risk of unemployment. The World Bank estimates that an extra year of university studies in Russia yields an 8% return on investment. The quality of a university, the specific field of study, and students’ individual strategies are all key factors in ensuring success in the labour market. These topics were discussed by Viktor Rudakov, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Head of the International Laboratory for Institutional Analysis of Economic Reforms, Assistant Professor of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, HSE University, in an open lecture on ‘How and Where to Study to Become Successful in the Labour Market’.