Russia: Political and Institutional Determinants of Economic Reforms (original) (raw)

Fifteen Years of Economic Reform in Russia

OECD Economics Department Working Papers, 2005

Fifteen years of economic reform in Russia: what has been achieved? What remains to be done? The paper provides an overview of the course of economic reform and the performance of the Russian economy since the early 1990s and an analysis of the structural reform challenges ahead. It assesses the contribution of institutional and structural reforms to economic performance over the period, before turning to the question of where further structural reforms could make the biggest contribution to improved performance. Three major conclusions emerge. First, there is still a great deal to be done to strengthen the basic institutions of the market economy. While the Russian authorities have embarked on some impressive-and often technically complex-'second-generation' reforms, many 'first-generation' reforms have yet to be completed. Secondly, the central challenges of Russia's second decade of reform are primarily concerned with reforming state institutions. Thirdly, the pursuit of reforms across a broad front could enable Russia to profit from complementarities that exist among various strands of reform.

Market Reforms in Russia - Problems and Prospects

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

The author analyses the economic reforms that have been implemented in Russia since 1991. In his opinion initial attempts to introduce market reforms by applying the shock therapy and forced-pace privatisation of state-owned enterprises caused high political and social costs to the Russia's fragile democracy. Therefore the radical reform policy was temporarily suspended, while the transition to a market economy was proceeded inconsistently and often unevenly. After the acute financial crisis took place in August 1998 the reform policy has been given new impetus. In the last few years substantial progress has been made in the process of privatisation, implementation of reforms in the financial sphere, energy sector, in the approach to the agriculture, in the employment policy, in making changes of the tax and pension systems. All these changes contributed to attaining the sustainable economic growth. The author concludes that for the persisting crisis in a number of areas, the future of the Russian market reforms still remains largely uncertain. Today's Russia between 1922 and 1991 was the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union. It declared its sovereignty on 12 June 1990 and on 8 December 1991 became a founding member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In the United Nations, Russia took the seat of the USSR on 24 December 1991, and with the latter's dissolution the next day turned into a full-fledged sovereign state. In April 1992, it joined the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), in June the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (IBRD), and in November 1998 the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). From July 1991 to December 1999, Russia's president was Boris Yeltsin, whose wide-ranging authority was further enhanced by the constitution adopted in December 1993. 2 The contradictory character of market reforms in the nineties can be attributed not to a little extent to the emergence of the so-called 'family', i.e. the elite around Yeltsin, and to the struggle for the redistribution of power and wealth. Yeltsin's heir, Vladimir Putin, who took over the presidency on 31 December 1999, has recently been trying to achieve change increasingly relying on his secret service, military and business associates in the formation of his political course vis-à-vis the 'family'. However, the situation is complicated by the fact that in the Russian Federation the government must, in the course of centralisation, consider the interests of regional elites, too. The present article is to analyse the economic processes of the past decade with the objective of giving a more or less comprehensive picture about the principal directions of market reforms, the situation in Russia's economy and the challenges it is now facing.

The Problems of Development of Economic Institutions in Russia

Asian Social Science, 2014

Delayed payments of wages, defaults, hostile takeovers of privatized companies and similar actions caused a lot of problems in economic system of Russia. Notwithstanding the every effort taken by the government, the new model of economic management was inefficient until a cluster of complementary institutions was formed. Analysis of transformation processes in the Russian economy shows that the evolution of economic institutions has since the early 90s been a complicated, often inconsistent process, mainly directed towards internalization of informal institutions, import of institutions and restoration of institutions. The paper examines the evolution of economic institutions in Russia since the beginning of market reforms. The authors reveled the close relationship and direct correlation between the effectiveness of Russian economic reforms and forming the new economic institutions.

Two years of economic reforms in Russia — Main results

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies, 1994

for helpful exchange of view concerning the economic situation in Russia. I want to acknowledge also the role of the staff of the Macroeconomic and Financial Unit of Ministry of Finance of Russia (MFU), especially of Brigitte Granville and Torun Hedback, in supplying me with necessary statistical data. Michael Cader was the translator of the Polish version into English. However, I am solely responsible for the content of this paper and its deficiencies.

The political economy of structural change in Russia

European Journal of Political Economy, 2006

The Russian Federation provides a valuable laboratory to study the impact of political forces on the process of structural reform. We examine changes in the industrial structure of employment across Russian regions and assess the importance of legacy factors, political factors, and success factors in explaining this process. We discuss the problems introduced by federalism in the transition process. We find that initial conditions such as natural resource potential, climate, and industrial specialization explain more of the variation in industrial restructuring than political variables.

Prospects of liberalization for S&T policies in Russia: institutional analysis

2010

The objective of the paper is to define the trajectory of economic institutional reforms in Russia as a framework of S&T policies. The methodology of this research is based upon the institutional matrices theory (Кирдина, 2001;. The hypothesis claims that the "institutional nature" of Russia defines its prospects of liberalization and needs the active implementation of liberal market institutions policy only within a framework of modernization of redistributive state economic system. Modern S&T policy in Russia demonstrates the implications of such kind of development. The new institutional form of State Corporation that is non-profit organization under government regulation has been widely developed for last 3 years. The main sphere of State Corporations activity is high-tech development. The share of State Corporations in the state budget is more than 20% and it is constantly increasing. -ideological interrelations embodying important social ideas and values. Each sphere is regulated by a corresponding set of basic institutions. These basic institutions are the subject of the analysis. Institutions permanently reproduce the staples of social relations in different civilizations and historical periods. Basic institutions integrate a society into one 'whole' that is developing, sometimes with conflicts and at other times with harmony, sometimes with competition and at other times with cooperation. Institutions have a dual natural-artificial character. On the one hand, institutions manifest self-organizational principles in a society as a co-extensive natural-social system. On the other hand, institutions are the result of purposeful human reflection with regard to relevant laws and rules; they emerge and are shaped as 'human-made' entities. Aggregations of interrelated basic economic, political and ideological institutions are defined as institutional matrices. Historical observations and empirical research as well as mathematical modelling and a broad philosophical approach provide a ground for our hypothesis about two particular types of institutional matrices existing around the world. Namely, we call the two types X-matrices and Y-matrices and compare the unique identities of each one. These matrices differ in a set of basic institutions forming them (see Image 1).