The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic has prompted governments and central banks to take unorthodox measures aimed at protecting the standard of living of people and sustaining the production and service activities of companies. The policy of aggressively rising the supply of money has entailed a significant increase in the budget deficit and public debt. It is important to consider the extent of its impact on the escalation of inflation processes and to formulate suggestions regarding the economic policy. Inflation is already higher than the official indicators show it, because it is partly suppressed. The increase in the general price level does not fully reflect the actual inflation rate. We are dealing with shortageflation — the simultaneous occurrence of price inflation and repressed inflation accompanied by shortages. It is methodologically interesting to compare this current phenomenon, 3.0, with the suppression of inflation in the war economy, 1.0, and in the economies of state socialism, 2.0. Such comparisons highlight not only the similarities of these processes but also the differences resulting from the specificity of responses of households and businesses. This article discusses five channels of unloading excessive savings, indicating the most beneficial ones from the point of view of sustainable economic development in the post-pandemic future. It is particularly important to prompt the conversion of compulsory savings into voluntary ones and at the same time to stimulate the transformation of inflationary monetary reserves into the effective demand expanding the use of existing production capacities and investments in creating new capacities.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the governments of almost all countries to introduce lockdowns in 2020, which sharply reduced the supply in a number of large service sectors: transport, recreation, catering, tourism. The recession began without a crisis, and the unique supply of cheap money and fiscal incentives prevented the development of a “liquidity crunch”. On the contrary, it led to an increase in stock prices, real estate prices, and a reduction in bankruptcies. There was no drop in the value of pension and investment funds. The working population has faced a reduction in employment in labor-intensive service industries, a violation of traditional lifestyle models. The course of the recession in these conditions has changed the structure of personal consumption in developed countries, with its severe adaptation in medium-developed and less developed countries. The pandemic and the recession have caused an uneven compression of activity and consumption across social strata that leads to an increase in social disparities on exiting the recession. The drivers of the demand-side recovery in developed countries are the growth of investments in housing and durable goods, and developing countries are gradually restoring normal consumption of non-durable goods and exports.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how the impact of the bank lending structure on economic growth differs depending on the level of a country’s development. The article provides suggestions on how much one can rely on the leading growth of corporate and consumer bank lending in order to promote economic growth. The study is based on the panel data for 211 countries for the period 1990—2019 using methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis. The authors have identified three groups of the countries where the impact of the bank lending structure on economic growth is different. In the least developed and low-income countries, the leading growth of both consumer and corporate lending has a positive impact on economic growth. As GDP per capita reaches 4,700—7,000 constant 2010 U.S. dollars, the outstripping growth of consumer lending begins to negatively affect economic growth, while corporate lending continues to have a positive impact. As GDP per capita continues to increase, corporate lending also begins to negatively affect economic growth. The GDP per capita threshold level, after which the negative impact of corporate lending begins, ranges from 6,000 to 42,000 constant 2010 U.S. dollars, some estimates allow us to specify these limits from 13,000 to 22,000 constant 2010 U.S. dollars. Such broad boundaries are determined by the fact that the role of the banking sector in investments financing may differ because of the financial sector model and the national economy structure. However, our results show that in the most developed and high-income countries, faster growth in corporate lending will not contribute to economic growth. The study also finds that the share of mortgage loans in GDP has a positive but insignificant effect on economic growth in all groups of the countries.

The article presents the justification of the methodology for studying the strategies of financial behavior of the population, the dynamics of their prevalence in Russia in the period 2009—2020, as well as the assessment of the influence of socio-demographic variables on the probability of having a financial strategy in the household. The analysis of the data obtained from “Monitoring of the financial behavior of the population” for 2009—2020 has demonstrated that the financial planning horizon of the majority of Russians does not exceed one year, about 50% of Russians have long-term financial goals, and about 30% have strategies to achieve them. A positive relationship has been revealed with a number of socio-demographic characteristics that fit into the logic of the life cycle: age, presence of children, higher education and income.

Deposit insurance system (DIS) exists for 17 years in Russia. The major deposit market share belongs to state banks. Ordinary depositors may perceive the status of the bank state ownership to reflect additional deposit safety, even in the excess of the DIS limits. Such a situation is called an “implicit deposit insurance” in the literature. By offering a sort of implicit deposit insurance services state banks might underprice the deposits in excess of DIS limits compared to the private banks. We utilize data from the open sources to measure the scale of the implicit deposit insurance pricing in Russian state banks. We have revealed that Russian state banks pay extra premium all other things being equal. More specifically, the premium is larger in the smallest and the largest state banks, than in the medium-sized ones. Thus, we claim that the implicit insurance premium has a U-shaped form for Russian state banks depending on their asset size. However, Russian state banks underprice all deposits all other things being equal. Additionally, we find out that IRB banks in Russia are more prone to set up higher deposit rates when they take on more risks, than non-IRB banks.

The new coronavirus pandemic has triggered an economic crisis different from other crises in the acuteness and non-uniformity of its impact on various sectors of the economy. This paper analyzes how the dynamics of firms entering and exiting the market have changed in this environment and which groups of firms have shown to be the most vulnerable to the negative effect of the crisis. Our analysis shows that the number of newly registered firms dwindled sharply in the period of the toughest restrictions imposed to curtail the infection spread in April — May 2020. The recovery which followed in the subsequent months has failed to compensate for the spring’s slump, which may suggest a “scarring impact” of the crisis. July and October 2020 saw a substantial rise in companies’ exits from the market. The crisis has hurt not only the hardest hit industries but also other areas of economic activity. Liquidations rose most extensively among young firms aged less than three years. Relatively higher productivity firms exited less often than lower productivity companies. This may suggest a “cleansing effect” of the crisis. But with the redundant labor being unable to move to more productive firms, the positive effect of the crisis may be brought to naught. Therefore, for the consequences of the crisis to be remedied, incentives should be provided to new firms’ entries and support for efficient companies, especially for young firms showing growth potential. Stimulation of growth in the number of high-productivity firms should go hand in hand with the creation of conditions for new entities’ fast development, expansion, and efficiency enhancement.

Using publicly available information, the article examines the economic concepts, which underlie the arguments of the decision of Polish competition authority UOKiK in relation to the participants of the Nord Stream 2. It explains the interrelation between economic and legal concepts, which are to be applied to interpret the competitive impact of joint venture and probable theory of harm for infrastructure investments under competition law of European Union, including in comparison with Russian competition law. It has been demonstrated that the resolution of a consortium case should be based on the proof of two statements. The first statement implies that the joint venture is a firm (and therefore the creation of a joint venture is a deal leading to economic concentration). The second statement means that despite Gazprom adopted the commitments about decision of the European Commission and trends in the development of the European gas market, the possibility of price discrimination is retained. Discussion and contestation of the decision against PJSC Gazprom testify in favor of maintaining the relevance of institutional studies and studies of industry markets for resolving legal disputes arising from the application of competition law.

The book under review reveals the complexities of transition processes and the evolution of reformers, elites and society’s notions of those processes nature. Four major blocks of problems are analyzed in the monograph: the nature of Russian capitalism which is determined by special features of its formation; the generality of transition processes of the economies that found themselves in the middle income trap; the impact of social inequality on the solution of economic, social and environmental problems. The monograph proves the transformation processes success evaluation criteria, and highlights the conditions that are necessary in order to achieve positive results of reforms. The cluster approach used in the analysis of intercountry inequality makes it possible to point out a number of stylized facts showcasing the lack of convergence in the economic growth course. The paper proves that the existing scale of social inequality makes it impossible to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.