Transcript
RAJ M. DESAI: One of the themes that emerge in this book is that there are several favorable conditions that the Russian economy has. One of them, of course, is the amount of input in terms of research and development.
Another one is the fact that Russia’s workforce is actually quite highly educated. In fact, it has one of the highest populations in the world of people with tertiary, with college degrees. But there has been, over the period of time since the early nineties, underfunding and deterioration of secondary education as well the absence of professional training for managers, for high-level staff in corporations that are contributing to some of these problems.
. . . Russia faces a choice now, more than ever. Recent global economic events have sort of put this in sharp relief. It can continue the sort of pursuit of natural resource-led growth and subsequent greater state intervention in the management of the economy while firms continue to suffer in terms of their competitiveness vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Or, it can address the innovation gap, and it can address deficiencies in worker skills and defects in the policy environment in order to build a competitive manufacturing base from which it can ultimately join global markets.
View Full Transcript »