Changes in Market Behaviour Among Russian Forest Enterprises

Abstract

The article reports on a follow-up of a case study conducted in 1998-1999 investigating the rules governing the behaviour of Russian forest enterprises. The new study, carried out in 2011-2012, used the same survey in interviews with a subset of the enterprises that took part in the original investigation. The objective was to see whether enterprises' behaviour and the rules governing their behaviour had become more market efficient since our original study. The new study showed that, over a ten-year period, the behaviour of the surveyed enterprises became better adapted to rules governing a modern market economy. However, many traits of the virtual economy remained. THIS ARTICLE REPORTS ON A FOLLOW-UP OF A SURVEY-BASED CASE study of institutional change in the Russian forest sector conducted in 1998-1999 as part of a project based at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). The original study sought to identify institutional hurdles to an efficient forest sector development in Russia's emerging market economy. Case studies were conducted in eight Russian regions with the purpose of describing the institutional framework governing actors' behaviour in the regional forest sector and identifying the most prominent institutional problems hampering the further development of the forest sector in the respective eight regions.