All world upward trends and cycles have a lot in common while crises significantly differ. In the case of this research the recession was sparked not by the shock of financial sector but by the restrictions imposed on consumption that previously was not inclined to fluctuate that much. Oil price shock has increased negative influence on the world energy market and economy overall. The decline in employment and personal consumption has struck more on most vulnerable social classes but the decreased volume of demand can be also attributed to the wealth (catering, tourism and others). Once began, the recession develops by its own rules — a sharp fall in the world trade, fixed capital formation, growth of budget deficits, and particularly strong impact on developing countries most dependent on tourism and financial assistance.

The coronavirus pandemic that has shaken the world will lay a long shadow for many years. It puts humanity in the face of incredible challenges that coincide with other negative mega-trends and unresolved economic, social and political problems. The enormous consequences and costs of the pandemic — human and social, economic and financial — will be known only ex post. While some lose nothing, others lose everything, sometimes even their lives. The heterogeneous, post-pandemic future — in which under the conditions of irreversible globalization various political and economic systems will interact with each other — will follow many paths, with the position of highly developed countries becoming relatively weaker. Tensions on the US—China line will increase, geopolitics and geoeconomics will change. The confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism will intensify, the synergy of the market and the state will be transformed. It will be particularly dangerous to turn two sides of the same counterfeit coin as an alternative: neoliberal capitalism versus populist capitalism. Chances for the better future may be created by a gradual transition to new pragmatism. It is a strategy of moderation in economic activities and a triple — economically, socially and ecologically — sustainable development based on the outline of an innovative, unorthodox and holistic economic theory. Pandemic is also an immense challenge for social sciences, not only for economics, because old manner of thinking will often occur to be useless for analyzing and explaining new situations.

The article analyzes the effectiveness of the investment process in Russian economy, which is assessed using indicators of specific capital investments for introduction of production capacities. The dynamics and characteristics of changes in specific capital investments for various types of economic activity of Russian industry are analyzed. The main groups of factors that determine the change in specific capital investments are identified. It is concluded that, in the medium term, the state of the economy with a significant share of extractive industries will continue to have a decisive influence on the dynamics of specific capital investments, and objective processes of depletion of the mineral resource base and worsening production conditions will increase specific capital investments. The continuation of the noted trends will determine the requirements for the volume and structure of investments to ensure the reproduction of the industrial potential and increase its technical and technological level.

The paper is devoted to the empirical estimation of the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investment in the Russian economy. The results suggest that there are crowding-out effects of FDI on the Russian economy. Using the firm-level database for 2008—2017, we analyze the presence of foreign companies in the Russian economy on the region, industry and industry in region levels. On the regional level the statistically significant effects of crowding out domestic investment are identified for state-owned, large as well as less effective companies. On the industry level the negative effects of crowding out are observed in case when FDI share in the industry exceeds 25. Estimating the effect of FDI presence on the industry in the region level, we reveal crowding out effects mainly for private and more effective national companies. Analyzing the effects in case of different levels of FDI in the economy, we do not find support for the hypothesis of adaptation of national companies for foreign companies’ presence in the economy. The paper suggests that the government policy in FDI regulation should focus on mitigation of the effects of pushing national companies off the market, and also creating conditions for cooperation of foreign and domestic companies.

The article provides some assumptions and hypotheses that have arisen as a result of a critical analysis of a new generation of crisis predictors. Three assumptions/hypotheses are submitted to the reader’s court: 1) on the possible impact of the negative spread of the yield on US Treasury bonds on the decisions of the US Federal Reserve; 2) on the effect of the central banks fulfilling the financial stability function on their monetary policy; 3) on the existence of objective reasons for Russia’s later entry into the global crisis of 2007—2009. The latter circumstance, along with the fact that some of the Russian recessions have significant internal causes, indicates the need for forming domestic crisis predictors. The assumptions and hypotheses cited in the article are debatable.

The article discusses the internal dualism of modern institutional economics, manifested in division of orthodox or mainstream institutionalism (its axiomatics and dogmatics are represented by the Standard Model) and its opposition post-institutionalism. An agenda for promising post-institutional studies is proposed, covering a wide range of discussion issues beyond the Standard Model — from the transition to integrative interpretations of institutions to the introduction of the Evo-Devo-paradigm of analysis of institutional evolution. A reorientation of the transactional analysis from minimizing transaction costs to maximizing the transaction value generated by institutions is proposed. The normocentric paradigm of institutional theory is discussed, considering any forms and trajectories of institutional evolution outside of the evaluation criteria, abandoning the tradition of negative labeling of institutional anomalies. The article demonstrates that in the focus of post-institutionalism there is institutional complexity, which can only be comprehended by overcoming reductionist methodological approaches of the institutional mainstream.

The article is devoted to the Russian edition in 2019 of perhaps the most important textbook on the theory of contracts in the last twenty-thirty years. From the very moment of its publication, in 2005, “Contract theory” by Bolton and Dewatripont has become the definitive English text on the topic for graduate students in all leading economic universities of the world. The translation of the book into Russian is an important event, since this textbook is unique: it provides the most general systemic overview of the huge field of contemporary economics, called contract theory, and which has evolved greatly for the last 30 years. The article gives the general overview of the book and briefly describes the evolution of the theory of contracts and general approach to the analysis of exchange of goods and services in the economy on the basis of this book and other literature. The article focuses on reviewing general ideas and concepts introduced by contract theory and the main models and methods that have made this domain a unified science.