The problem of efficiency of regional tax expenditures is an actual issue of the fiscal policy and fiscal federalism in Russia. A large fiscal autonomy allows federal subjects to realize a more active tax policy to attract new investments. One cannot claim current fiscal powers of the Russian regions to be wide. However, not all the regions use even existing tax policy instruments. Moreover, out of the regions that use them only few provide incentives to stimulate investment decisions. Others use regional tax measures to support businesses that already have strong positions in the region. And it is an open question whether such tax incentives are efficient. On the other hand, an aggressive tax competition for investors can also be wasteful for regional budgets. In this paper, we calculate indicators that characterize the depth and scope of tax exemptions provided at the regional level. The calculations are based on the open tax statistics. Through the analysis of the tax legislation as well as the economic structure of selected regions, we reveal the inducements of their higher activity: federal regional tax policy, tax competition or benefits for budget-forming companies of the region.

The paper analyzes the consequences of the abolition of the export duty on oil and oil products as a necessary step to stimulate energy efficiency of Russia’s economy and eliminate underdevelopment provoked by a long-term subsidizing of inefficient oil refining sector in Russia. The calculation results have shown that even taking into account several deviations from the planned scenarios of changing the parameters of tax regulation of the oil industry in 2014— 2019, the tax maneuver brought over 3.5 trillion rubles (in 2019 — 148 billion rubles) to the state budget in 2014—2017, mainly due to an increase in the base mineral extraction tax rate, and contributed to an increase in the depth of oil refining from 72% to 85%. In addition, the article analyzes possible risks associated with the current plan for reforming the taxation of the industry until 2024 and proposes an alternative that could level some of them. A comparative analysis of the effects of the tax maneuver under the current reform plan and the alternative variant suggests that the latter will allow to achieve a greater total budgetary effect in four years, reduce the cost of subsidizing domestic oil refining, increase the efficiency of Russian vertically integrated oil companies, and reduce the growth rate of oil products prices in the retail market.

Nowadays the unpredictability and nonlinearity of macroeconomic processes are growing, due to the technological changes, the increasing economic complexity, and the environmental risks. The development of small and medium‑sized enterprises (SMEs) is considered as one of the tools for adapting to these processes. The decline in entrepreneurial activity can finally lead to long-term consequences. Thus, many countries introduce the entrepreneurial support policy. Our review shows that in the face of weak development of public control institutions, direct financial measures can lead to new institutional traps. This forms a need for new and alternative approaches to entrepreneurship policy. The purpose of the paper is to justify and describe an alternative entrepreneurial policy for developing countries, based on the concept of entrepreneurial ecosystems. The goals and principles of the ecosystem approach are formulated in the article. They have been used to identify new directions and evaluate existing measures of Russian entrepreneurship policy: local authorities and business agents are poorly motivated, local characteristics are not always taken into account, there is a distrust between contractors, support institutions are not open enough, direct support is mainly provided. As a result, the role of the sector in the economy is consistently low and declining. The new approach can become the basis for post-crisis policy in the context of reducing natural resource rent.

We study the relation between trust and economic growth. We explore the history of the topic and conduct empirical analysis using all the available data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study, including data for the recent years. We show that results of the classic models that establish positive relation between trust and economic growth do not replicate on the most recent data. Moreover, neither use of alternative indicators of trust, nor dividing the countries into the groups depending on institutional quality yields to the appearance of relation. We discuss possible reasons for the absence of relation between trust and economic growth in the recent years, in particular, the changing role of trust in the modern world, and point to the importance of more detailed exploration of the mechanisms of relation between trust and economic growth.

This paper considers a simple Bayesian vector autoregressive model for the Russian economy based on data for real GDP, GDP deflator and oil price as an exogenous variable that acts as a proxy variable for the terms of trade. Along with the impact of oil price shocks, the model estimates the impact of supply and demand shocks, the identification of which is based on the approach of sign restrictions. According to the results obtained, at the end of 2014 and in 2015, demand shocks had a positive impact on GDP growth, which can be interpreted as a positive effect of the ruble devaluation at the end of 2014. In the next years, demand shocks led mainly to a slowdown in economic growth. The paper also attempts to identify monetary policy shocks and assesses their impact on GDP, household consumption and investment. According to the results, the effect of monetary shocks in 2015—2019 on all endogenous variables was negative. However, an increase in the interest rate at the end of 2014 is identified mostly as an endogenous reaction to other shocks, and the effect of the monetary shock on GDP in 2015 is nearly zero. In 2017, monetary shocks slowed down GDP by 0.92 percentage points.

The article clarifies the concept of “agricultural holding”, using an approach to assessing the size on the basis of the total revenue of all agricultural organizations within the agricultural holding. It has been revealed that only 100 of the total number of agricultural holdings that were identified can be attributed to large business entities. They comprise about 3% of agricultural organizations in the country, while their share in the proceeds is about 37%. A large share of agricultural holdings — large business subjects under the control of Russian entities operate in one, and under the control of foreign legal entities — in three or more regions of the Russian Federation. Vertical integration within the framework of large agricultural holdings with different schemes for including the stages of processing and sale of products produced in their agricultural organizations allows them to receive advantages. Strengthening the role of large business entities in agriculture puts on the agenda the issue of differentiating approaches to taxation and state support in agriculture, depending on the size of the companies’ agricultural businesses.

The bankruptcy of large agricultural holdings has a very significant impact on production volumes, agricultural incomes, government spending on agricultural development and its effectiveness, consumer spending on food. This is illustrated with the case of the agricultural holding “Eurodon” which became bankrupt in 2019. Its bankruptcy brought down the financial results of the agricultural sector, increased the losses of agricultural organizations of the country by almost three times. The creditors’ claims on holding companies recognized by the arbitration court amounted to about 196 billion rubles taking into account the guarantees of agricultural holding organizations among themselves, without guarantees — 53 billion rubles. However, it was possible to sell the holding’s assets after bankruptcy for only 6 billion rubles. The main losses were endured by the “VEB. RF” Development Corporation. According to experts, new multi-billion loans are required to resume the holding’s operations at the volumes preceding its bankruptcy. The federal budget suffered huge losses due both to non-repayment of loans and to subsidies allocated to the holding for the period of its existence. Losses of the Rostov region are also significant: 6 thousand people lost their jobs (their salary amounted to 2.6 billion rubles a year). Also taxes to the budget, contributions to extrabudgetary funds, etc. ceased. Turkey prices on average increased by 14% in the country. The analysis of the bankruptcy case of “Eurodon” allowed to identify the risks of holdingization and develop a set of measures to reduce them.

This paper is the first to assess the integral level of risks in public-private partnership (PPP) projects being implemented in Russia, taking into account the stages of project implementation. The results of empirical assessments have shown that the aggregate risk level is now estimated by experts as high. The key risks are incorrect assessment of project parameters, possible change of tariffs as well as risks related to the construction stage and demand for services. The majority of risk factors in PPP projects are of sectoral, project-level nature and are not related to economic, political or legal conditions. The study has shown differences in the structure of risks that partnership subjects are willing to take and transfer to another party, which has allowed to justify the distribution of risks among participants.

The monograph “Mesoeconomics: Elements of a new paradigm”, prepared by the collective of Russian and foreign scientists, reveals the stages and genesis’s internal logic of one of the most promising areas of modern economic science — mesoeconomics. This article identifies the empirical, managerial, theoretical, and system-wide foundations for the need for mesoeconomics to arise as an independent discipline. The importance of the economy’s mesolevel for the transition to the trajectory of the sustainable evolutionary growth of Russia is emphasized. It is proposed to institutionalize the belonging of economic objects to the economy’s mesolevel, introducing the status of a “mesoeconomic organization” for them. It is a prerequisite for separating mesoeconomic formations from microeconomic objects and macroeconomic systems. This status allows introducing special tax regimes, facilitating access to state orders, while strengthening the social responsibility of the mesoeconomic organization to the state, business, economy, and society. The role of the Center for Evolutionary Economics of the Institute of Economics, RAS as the “assembly point” of modern research in the field of mesoeconomics is emphasized.

The book under review aims to form a broad picture of economic reforms in the course of transition from a planned economy to a market one in the memberstates of Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The authors set as their objective to show changes of economic institutions in the process of market reforms. In this book, the main attention is paid to institutions of ownership and institutions, which determine the role of the state in the economy. This analysis not only shows the process of reforms in different countries, but demonstrates the evolution of the conditions for economic integration of EAEU member-states. In the book, the presence of barriers for integration is analyzed as well as the conditions for their dismantling. It contains a lot of facts and empirical information, which are structured by unified principles that makes the process of comparing economic reforms in different countries much easier. At the same time, the empirical part in the book evidently prevails over the analytical one. Presentation of facts is rarely followed by definitive theoretical conclusions.