Continuity and Change

For reasons having to do with the Soviet resource
allocation model, many Russian forest sector
enterprises were miserably unfit to meet the market
competition that started to emerge after the
disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early
1990s. To avoid bankruptcy and stay alive in Russia s
transition towards a market-like system many
enterprises chose to engage in non-monetary
transactions, thus establishing what has become known
as Russia s virtual economy. The peculiar
institutions ( rules-in-use ) guiding actors
behaviour in this odd system are incom- patible with
the operation of efficient markets.

The topics discussed in this book can be framed
through the following questions: What is the general
role of institutions in the on-going changes in
Russian society? Are there institutions that hamper
the transition process towards demo- cracy and a
market economy? If so, how do they hamper this
process? How can such institutions be changed to
better serve the needs of the emerging market system?
These and similar questions are addressed from
several different but related perspectives in a
number of studies of actors behaviour in the Russian
timber procurement arena.

Autorentext
Mats-Olov Olsson holds a PhD in Political Science from Luleå
University of Technology. He has done research on the Soviet
Union and Russia at Uppsala University and the Centre for
Regional Science, Umeå University, Sweden. In 1997 2001
he was a Research Scholar at the International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) near Vienna.

Klappentext
For reasons having to do with the Soviet resource allocation model, many Russian forest sector enterprises were miserably unfit to meet the market competition that started to emerge after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. To avoid bankruptcy and stay alive in Russia's transition towards a market-like system many enterprises chose to engage in non-monetary transactions, thus establishing what has become known as Russia's virtual economy. The peculiar institutions ("rules-in-use") guiding actors' behaviour in this odd system are incom- patible with the operation of efficient markets. The topics discussed in this book can be framed through the following questions: What is the general role of institutions in the on-going changes in Russian society? Are there institutions that hamper the transition process towards demo- cracy and a market economy? If so, how do they hamper this process? How can such institutions be changed to better serve the needs of the emerging market system? These and similar questions are addressed from several different but related perspectives in a number of studies of actors' behaviour in the Russian timber procurement arena.