Ekaterina Travova

This paper examines the use of high-powered performance-based incentives for civil servants, focusing on drug-related cases registered by the Russian police. Using an event study approach and bunching analysis, I show that the incentives arising from the performance evaluation system of police officers can significantly influence their behavior. Specifically, I find evidence suggesting that this impact can result in the manipulation of drug quantities seized by the police, moving offenders from below to above the punishment threshold. Further negative consequences of the strong performance-based incentives are inequality in the enforcement of law, prolonged sentences, and increased probability of pretrial detention. Thus, I determine that police officers are more likely to manipulate the drug quantities seized from men. I also find that the manipulation increases the probability of pretrial detention by 9% and adds one more year of incarceration, which is a 67% increase on the average sentence length without manipulation.

This paper investigates the influence of the Orthodox Church network in Post-Soviet Russia on individual political preferences and election results. I use the numbers of monks and nuns from Orthodox monasteries operated in the Russian Empire before the Revolution as historical religious markers to construct a Bartik-style instrument (1991). I find that a denser Church network increases the average local approval rating for the current president and the share of votes cast for the government candidate in presidential elections. Further analysis of mechanisms shows that, today, the extending Church network is increasingly less able to attract people to attend church and to substantially increase the share of practicing believers. However, it does affect the political preferences of those who, regardless of their faith in God, self-identify as Orthodox. The potential channel for persuasion is media.

This paper studies the long-run effects of personal experience of work-life disruption during the transition period in the 11 former communist CEE countries on life satisfaction and political left-right orientation. We implement an instrumental variable strategy, constructing an instrument which captures the potential exposure of a person to the country-wide sector-specific disruption shock. We find a significant negative impact of transition disruption on current life satisfaction, which is stronger for men without university degree. We also identify a number of negative long-run effects on marital status, perceived control over life, and some health outcomes (likelihood of drinking and smoking). Further, we document that a career disruption during the transition period tends to shift the political orientation to the right side of the left-right scale.