Sergei Guriev is a professor of economics and director of graduate studies in economics at Sciences Po, Paris. He is a former Chief Economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, London, and a former Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow.

Daniel Treisman is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. A former editor of the American Political Science Review, he is the author of "The Return: Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev" and editor of "The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia."