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This paper examines the tough anti-alcohol legislation recently introduced in Russia, which due to regional variation allows it to be used as a natural experiment. The effect of the restricted trading hours on alcoholic poisoning mortality is estimated. To establish a causal link, difference-in-differences and synthetic controls are used. The main conclusion is that the sales restrictions lead to higher alcohol poisoning mortality, which implies that more toxic alcohol surrogates serve as substitutes for commercially available alcohol.

The paper discusses a number of hypotheses as potential explanations of the spatial income distribution in Russia. The hypotheses include the increasing return hypothesis, the institutions hypothesis and the simple and sophisticated versions of the geography hypothesis. According to the existing evidence, the sophisticated geography hypothesis fits best Russian data. This suggests that the changes in spatial income distribution follow the changes in local geographical characteristics and in their economic value.

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The paper is dedicated to the New Institutional and Post Keynesian perspectives on institutions and their relation to economic stability. Embeddedness, institutional environment, and institutional arrangements are considered. Within these institutions conventional expectations, the economic policy and forward contracts are analyzed. Upon these perspectives the author shows a contradictory relation between institutions and the order and develops an institutional theory of business cycles.