John Nye: belief

Transcript context

…Russia’s economic future — are we underrating it? No, unfortunately. I think Russia suffers very much from two problems. One is the well-known problem of resource curse. I do think that Russia having abundant oil and gas makes it very hard for them, for their political economy to develop properly, for all the known reasons. But the other thing I think is not talked about is that, since Russia became such a gigantic empire, in particular in the 19th century, Russia has had such a hard time. I would argue the political impetus, the imperatives of holding together such a large land mass and all the peoples in it, and worrying about its borders, overwhelms incentives to promote growth and development within the country. But the USSR is gone. Say they would hand over parts of eastern Russia to China, just as a gift, write them off —…

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