Research & Expertise news at HSE University

According to the findings of HSE researchers, up to one-quarter of school graduates in Moscow enrol in low-quality universities despite scoring highly on their Unified State Exam, the final school exam and a standard university admission mechanism in Russia. This academic mismatch limits their life opportunities and often stems from unequal starting conditions in the family and at school.

Alexander Efimov, a research fellow at the International Laboratory for Mirror Symmetry and Automorphic Forms of HSE University, has been awarded the European Mathematical Society’s prestigious Prize.

On May 21, the joint webinar series, ‘Education under COVID-19: Problems, Solutions, Perspectives, Research’ began with a session about the effects of school closures under the pandemic. Harry Anthony Patrinos of the World Bank presented the results of a model that he and a team of researchers developed in order to predict the extent to which the closures may reduce learning and lead to future losses in labor productivity and earnings for today’s students. The webinar was moderated by Isak Froumin (Head of the HSE Institute of Education), while Professors Tommaso Agasisti (School of Management, Politecnico di Milano) and Sergey Kosaretsky (Director, HSE Centre of General and Extracurricular Education) served as discussants.

On May 14, as part of the ‘World Economy’ session of the XXI April Conference 2020 an online panel attended by representatives of BRICS Network University took place. The session was devoted to the topic ‘BRICS Countries in the Global Economy’.

HSE University’s Centre of Development Institute has conducted its regular quarterly survey of experts’ projections for the Russian economy in the 2020–2021 period. According to the consensus forecast, Russia’s GDP will decrease by 4.3% this year. This seems to be a more optimistic outlook compared, for example, to the IMF’s forecast, which suggests a 5.5% decline.

Why are Easter eggs painted red? What can be done with consecrated eggshells? How did eggs become part of traditional rituals? Folklorist Andrei Moroz told IQ.HSE about some popular beliefs associated with Easter.

On Wednesday, May 13, the award ceremony for the 2020 Russian National Award in Applied Economics took place on Zoom as part of the XXI April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development. This year the prize was awarded to Marco Francesconi (University of Essex, UK), Fabián Slonimczyk, and Anna Yurko (HSE University, Moscow)

In a recent report, HSE experts evaluated the world’s 14 countries hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic based on data (including the number of recorded deaths) from May 1, 2020 or later. The report also examined 16 other countries whose experience was considered significant. While refraining from making generalizations, experts nonetheless noted that leaders in Europe and the United States have generally not responded to the situation as effectively as their Asian counterparts. Africa, meanwhile, follows its own course, while the situation in Brazil is worse.