Reform along the Volga
The purpose of this project is to document and analyze the experience with reform at the grassroots level in Russia. Understanding the nature and diversity of this experience is important for understanding the impediments to growth and poverty reduction--and the policies and programs that might be most effective in achieving these goals. The study will also examine the relationship between regional and local governments--a relationship with increasing importance as efforts are made to reach an agreement on the revenue, expenditure, and regulatory responsibilities to be assigned to different levels of government.
The nine cities included in the study are Astrakhan, Cheboksary, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Sarotov, Ulyanovsk, Volgograd, and Yaroslavl. They lie along the Volga River, in the heartland of Russia, and span 3 of Russia's 11 regions. Each city is the capital of one of Russia's 89 federation subjects (oblasts and the like) and has a population between 0.5 million and 1.5 million.
In this first phase the project is developing case studies of each of the cities and a database with comparable indicators across the nine cities and their surrounding oblasts. These data will be used to construct indicators of initial conditions, political developments, and reform, and the study will try to use these indicators to explain reform and to identify policy levers that may be effective in achieving the goals of growth and poverty reduction.
The work to develop an information base for the surrounding oblast of each city draws on secondary data from a variety of sources. Russian researchers are developing indicators of initial conditions, political developments, and reform at the municipal level, where little information is readily available outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Responsibility: Policy Research Department, Public Economics Division--Martha de Melo (mdemelo@worldbank.org). With Michael Haney; Gür Ofer, Hebrew University; Maxim Ivanov, Nataliya Volchkova, Elena Lukoyanovo, Anna Dodonova, Yuri Khorozhilov, Nina Parphinnko, Gauhar Turmuhambetova, Yuri Andrienko, and Alexander Piskunov, New Economics School, Moscow; and the New Economics School.
Completion date: June 1998.
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