 Who bears the cost of Russia's military draft?Michael Lokshin and Ruslan Yemtsov The Economics of Transition, 2008, vol. 16, issue 3, 359-387 Abstract: In this paper we use data from a large nationally representative survey in Russia to empirically estimate the distribution of the burden induced by the military draft. We focus on draft avoidance as a common response to the conscription system ridden by corruption. We develop a simple theoretical model that describes household compliance decisions with respect to enlistment as a function of its pre‐draft welfare. We employ the full information maximum‐likelihood instrumental variable model to estimate the effect of household characteristics on the probability of serving in the army. Our results indicate that the burden of conscription falls excessively on the poor. Poor, low‐educated, rural households are much more likely to have their sons enlisted compared to urban, wealthy and better‐educated families. Using the predicted probability of draft avoidance, we estimate the short‐term direct economic cost of the draft as lost wages of serving conscripts. Our results suggest that losses incurred by the poor are disproportionately large and exceed the statutory rates of personal income taxes. Date: 2008 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:etrans:v:16:y:2008:i:3:p:359-387 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article The Economics of Transition is currently edited by Philippe Aghion and Wendy Carlin More articles in The Economics of Transition from The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Contact information at EDIRC. |
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