I am a university lecturer at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and a professor (on leave) at the New Economic School (Moscow, Russia). I study the economic history of Russia, Eastern Europe, and North Eurasia. The development of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in the 18th – 20th centuries is at the center of my research. I focus on the interconnections between institutions and economic growth, the political economy of state socialism, and the long-run consequences of history. I have published in international refereed journals including American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic History, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Public Economics. The paper on Russian national income in 1913-1928 was awarded to Russian National prize in applied economics in 2011. I was a Marie Curie Research fellow at the University of Warwick in 2005–2007 and a national research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford in 2014–2015.