2011. Vol. 12. No. 5

Despite the 20 years of economic transformation from the redistributive system (razdatok) to the market, the Russian modern housing policy has returned to the large-scale introduction of departmental and public housing and municipal mortgage (at reduced rate) for government employees. It resulted from the mechanism of market-razdatok equilibrium. In the course of historical changes in Russia it came through three institutional cycles. At structured phases of these cycles the razdatok turns out to be in the front while at the transformation stages a quasi market is formed. Both models generate significant outcomes but then face a crisis. This impasse is usually resolved by mutual replacement of these models. The new housing policy should synthesize market and redistributive (razdatok) mechanisms as indicated by the experience of welfare states’ formation in the developed countries

The book “Into the Red: The Birth of the Credit Card Market in Postcommunist Russia” by Alya Guseva explores the emergence of the credit card industry in Russia and discusses the demand creation process for absolutely new product. The research is based both on the written sources and on interviews and archival data collected in two series in Moscow (Russia) from 1998 to 1999 and from 2003 to 2005. The author finds out that the socialist legacies shaped the Russian credit card market development. This path-dependence of the Russian market resulted in non-trivial solutions discovered by the market actors trying to cope with uncertainty and complementarity as two critical factors. Social networks play a vital role here as well. Networks joined by consumers and organizations aid to develop markets for mass consumption.
The journal “Economic Sociology” publishes the first chapter of the book, “The Architecture of Credit Card Market”, providing with the theoretical foundations for the empirical research. This chapter addresses the problems faced by banks in nascent credit card market. Banks are expected to cope with uncertainty in credit lending, to create consumer demand and at the same time to appeal to merchants. In addition, there is a specific problem generated from cultural factors, including a mistrust of formal institution of money lending. The author briefly considers how the US banks and their Russian counterparts coped with the mentioned challenges.

The research aims at describing mechanisms and practices of «grey» importation of consumer goods over the Russian-Chinese border. It also demonstrates significant changes which happened over the last 10 years. The city of Blagoveshchensk (Amur region) serves as a case studied. Data covers in-depth interviews, observations, information from the website «Amur.info» and relevant legislation. «Grey» importation and shuttle trade are discussed from the standpoint of the new institutional economics and networks perspectives. The comparison of early and late 2000s business practices shows that applied «grey» business schemes are flexible and universal. In addition, there are important shifts in actors’ status, role of Customs office and goods quality.

The article is devoted to employees’ orientations within the space of «cooperation−conflict». Social attitudes of employees to interactions between main actors of labor relations are empirically studied by instruments of factor analysis.

The article describes the academic literature on social roots of police involvement into informal economy. The major issue for investigation is: why do policemen move from law enforcement officers into market actors? Does it result from group norm socialization or their individual characteristics? Three concepts involving individual, group and system factors are introduced. Attempts to adapt approaches applied in sociology of deviant behavior (social criminology) to economic sociological tasks are undertaken. In conclusion, potential trajectories for the future research of these issues are indicated. полиция