NBER Working Papers by Dmitriy Stolyarov

We construct key household and individual economic variables using a panel micro data set from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for 1994-2005. We analyze cross-sectional income and consumption inequality and find that inequality decreased during the 2000-2005 economic recovery. The decrease appears to be driven by falling volatility of transitory income shocks. The response of consumption to permanent and transitory income shocks becomes weaker later in the sample, consistent with greater self-insurance against permanent shocks and greater smoothing of transitory shocks. Comparisons of RLMS data with official macroeconomic statistics reveal that national accounts may underestimate the extent of unofficial economic activity, and that the official consumer price index may ov...

This paper deals with processes that require several complementary inputs subject to improvements in quality. If after a quality upgrade one of these inputs requires a period of learning before it can be used effectively, then in general it will pay to purchase the inputs at different dates -- the purchases will be asynchronous. That is so because it is wasteful to tie up funds in the other inputs which will be underutilized until the date learning is over. We provide evidence that technology has been used asynchronously in the automobile industry, in the television broadcasting industry, in electricity supply, and in railways, and we argue that our model helps explain this evidence.