Ruben Enikolopov

Inserted 2 years ago

“In terms of the government, the problem is that they're silent about the economy. The first reaction for many of them - because they grew up in the Soviet Union, so that's the mentality they have - is price controls and things like that. They might work temporarily, but in the long-run it's a disaster for the economy. It's really hard to even imagine what the government can do. In some senses they're hostage to this situation. All the main events are completely unrelated to the government's decisions. The danger of this approach [nationalization of property of foreign investors and government-mandated prices] is it works in the short-term. But this is a crisis that will be very prolonged. The closer we are to a planned economy, the more the government intervenes and nationalises, the harder it will be for the economy to adjust and more likely it will end up really bad.”

Themoscowtimes

Economist and rector of Moscow's New Economics School