What's Wrong with the Russian Economy?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007 | 11:45 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
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About This Event

The growth of Russia’s economy has been the success story of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. Since 2000, Russia’s GDP has increased by an average of 7 percent per year. Of late, however, the optimism about Russia’s economic future has been diminished by rising inflation, which has skyrocketed to over 11 percent from 9 percent a year ago. The price of bread, a staple of the Russian diet, doubled this year. From August to September, the price of milk rose by 9.2 percent and vegetable oil by 15 percent. In an attempt to control inflation, the Kremlin forced the largest food sellers to freeze the prices of bread, milk, sugar, cheese, and vegetable oil. The moratorium will continue through the Duma elections on December 2 and may be extended past the presidential elections in March 2008. Yet these price controls have not slowed inflation, which jumped another 0.9 percent in the first two weeks of November.

What is behind this sudden increase in inflation? What effect will it have on the prospects for Russia’s economic future? Can the Kremlin effectively curtail inflation before it does more damage, both economically and politically? On December 18, 2007, AEI will host a panel with Andrei Illarionov, former economic advisor to President Putin; AEI economist Desmond Lachman; and Ann Wrobleski, vice president for public affairs at International Paper, to discuss these and other questions.

Agenda
11:45 a.m.
Registration and Luncheon
12:00 p.m.
Panelists:
Andrei Illarionov, Cato Institute
Ann Wrobleski, International Paper
Desmond Lachman, AEI
Moderator:
Leon Aron, AEI
2:00
Adjournment
Event Materials
What's Wrong with the Russian Economy?
Transcript of the event.
AEI Participants

 

Leon
Aron

  • Leon Aron is Resident Scholar and Director of Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of three books and over 300 articles and essays. Since 1999, he has written Russian Outlook, a quarterly essay on economic, political, social and cultural aspects of Russia’s post-Soviet transition, published by the Institute. He is the author of the first full-scale scholarly biography of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and Russia’s Revolution: Essays 1989-2006 (AEI Press,2007); Roads to the Temple: Memory, Truth, Ideals and Ideas in the Making ofthe Russian Revolution, 1987-1991 (Yale University Press, Spring 2012).


    Dr. Aron earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, has taught a graduate seminar at Georgetown University, and was awarded the Peace Fellowship at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has co-edited and contributed the opening chapter to The Emergence of Russian Foreign Policy, published by the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1994 and contributed an opening chapter to The New Russian Foreign Policy (Council on Foreign Relations, 1998).


    Dr. Aron has contributed numerous essays and articles to newspapers andmagazines, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, theWall Street Journal,   Foreign Policy, The NewRepublic, Weekly Standard, Commentary, New York Times Book Review, the TimesLiterary Supplement. A frequent guest of television and radio talkshows, he has commented on Russian affairs for, among others, 60 Minutes,The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, CNN International,C-Span, and National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Talk of theNation.”


    From 1990 to 2004, he was a permanent discussant at the Voice of America’s radio and television show Gliadya iz Ameriki (“Looking from America”), which was broadcast to Russia every week.

  • Phone: 202-862-5898
    Email: laron@aei.org

  • Assistant Info

    Name: Daniel Vajdic
    Phone: 202-862-5942
    Email: daniel.vajdic@aei.org
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