2001. Vol. 2. No. 3

The paper suggests a theoretical approach to the institutional analysis of the economic action. It begins with the discussion of the institutional approach specifics in economic sociology.  After that a detailed research scheme is given and it combines institutional emergence, the structure of the economic actors’ motives and the concepts of control. The author highlights the forms of legitimate claims on the resources and incomes, the ways of keeping in touch, business networks and business strategies formation. 

The paper gives a scheme of the financial population behavior research. The author analyzes the social-economic mechanism of the financial field as a system of elements and linkages, which provide the functioning and development of the financial sphere of the society. The paper discloses the results of the financial behavior research of the population in the Nizhegorodskiy region.   

The paper concentrates on the advantages and disadvantages of economic approaches to the wage differences explanations based on the human capital theory (the impact of the education, training, professional experience), on the economic theories focusing on the personal differences between people (differences in abilities and possibilities). Alternative sociological approaches (to social inequality and its effect on the wage differences in accordance with personal characteristics) are also in the focus of the paper. The author implies the empirical analysis of value changes to education and the influence of the employees’ quality difference on the wage distribution in Russia. The analysis is based on the sociological project «The Strategies of the Economic Survival of the Population in the Contemporary Russia».  

The author starts the paper from the phrase: «The labour market was the only market in the Soviet Union, which could be called market in the capitalist economy», which is the background for the following discussion. The paper analyzes the distribution of the work force, entrance into the labour market, employment mobility, labour market policy and the meaning of perestroika for the labour market.