Economics

An import reduction has a more than proportionate impact on Russia’s industrial output and exports. Over one year, a 1% decrease in imports as a share of production costs across industries leads to a more than 2% output reduction and an even more significant decline in exports.

Why should we expect a slowdown of the Russian economy, what traps has it fallen into, what will help curb inflation, and what are the fiscal policy risks? These issues were discussed by economists at the Financial Congress of the Bank of Russia.

Modern technology and big data on retail sales enable more accurate and faster measurement of inflation. We are developing a methodology for calculating a price index based on data from online receipts: in the future, it will make it possible to track inflation in near real time.

Human capital is one of the key factors of economic growth, but there are few quantitative estimates of its contribution to the Russian economy. New estimates show that its contribution peaked in the second half of the 2000s and had almost disappeared by the end of the 2010s.

In a geographically large economy, different regions can respond differently to the same events. Nowcasting used for data across Russia revealed these differences as well as their dependence on the level of development and the sectoral specialisation of the regions.

There is not a single industry in Russia in which the overhang of job vacancies is not rising. Although the renewed growth of real wages will reduce this overhang, the labour shortage may persist for many years, according to Rostislav Kapeliushnikov, a labour market expert.

The number of educated and employed women in Russia is high by world standards. Russia is among the world leaders for the share of families with a woman as the main breadwinner. The weak role in governance and large pay gap are paradoxical, but have an institutional explanation.

The past two years saw an almost complete transformation of the logistics and geography of Russia’s export and import. Analysis of this process has identified a number of patterns and risks in the new structure of foreign trade.