You might remember a 2009 Shaftesbury Society presentation from UNC-Chapel Hill historian Peter Coclanis, in which he oulined Russia?s debilitating demographic crisis.

In the Carolina Journal Radio interview associated with that presentation, Coclanis explained a key factor in that demographic decline:

Yeah, Russia?s policies are not conducive, really, to people making informed decisions to bring more children into this world. Some people have claimed that the democracy deficit and the unstable and destabilized political and social environment raises too many opportunity costs, as economists say, to make a decision to ?invest? in having a child, or certainly two children. There?s just too much possibility for something going wrong, for the investment not to pay off, for the property rights that you are trying to invest, in a sense, in your child, to really have a chance to recoup that investment over time.

Armed with that knowledge, you won?t be surprised to read a Business Week article headlined ?Deadly Business in Moscow?:

Now [Jamison] Firestone, a former board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, has fled for London, fearing that he, too, could end up in jail. “Police [in Russia] have to stop being the Mafia,” he says. “These people are stealing the country.”

? In interviews with Bloomberg News, ? Firestone for the first time is alleging government-sponsored fraud aimed at him personally. His account underscores the arm-twisting and lawlessness that can afflict outsiders doing business in Russia. As widely reported, oil giants British Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell have suffered politically backed attempts to wrest control of aspects of their Russian operations. The French carmaker Renault likewise has come under government pressure to assist a Russian manufacturer in which it had invested.

The risk of being targeted for abuse by government officials?sometimes operating in league with Russian businesses?is a central reason the country has attracted less than one-fifth the foreign investment in China and Brazil and half of what’s invested in India, according to three years of data compiled by fund tracker EPFR Global.

No wonder few people are clamoring to live, work, or invest in Russia.