Exploring the Future of Russia’s Economy and Markets

There has been a financial revolution lead by technology firms over the past decade. Many large established technology giants, from Google, Apple to Amazon in the US are entering the financial service industry. Smaller start-ups, in particular, robotic advisors, a.k.a. robo-advisors have been taking market shares from traditional asset management firms. In China, firms like Tencent and Alibaba have created a whole new field of online finance. The center of our study is a critical examination of the essential components of the financial innovation over the past 10 years. Mobile banking was the beginning, followed by trading, investment, and insurance business. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are included for discussion in this chapter. Our goal is to develop a thorough understanding of the art and science of financial innovation, from both bottom-up market indicators and a top-down holistic view. Then, we apply to the situation in Russia. We want to demonstrate that the technological changes are likely to have a significant impact on Russia’s sustainable finance and banking development.

This chapter measures the contribution of financial development to economic growth in Russia. The expansion of banking system causes institutional improvement in the economy, which results in extended and sustained economic growth due to changes in financial institutions. This chapter proposes the novel idea of principal component analysis (PCA) to overcome these problems. Then, the PCA method provides loading factors that condense financial information into a few orthogonal factors, which are used as explanatory variables. The study indicates that financial development explains both per capita GDP and its growth rate. The explanatory power of the models improves by adding control variables and econometric safeguards such as correcting for nonstationarity and multicolinerity. However, utilizing the PCA method to obtain an orthogonal set of variables to represent financial development, deepening, and concentration improves the performance of the model even further.

We examine the behavior of the Russian stock market as one of the leading indices of economic health, reflecting investors’ expectations about future returns. The sample period includes the global financial crisis, a recovering period, and the recent crisis in the Russian economy 2014–2015.

We assume that the Russian stock market strongly depends on the global market, but the market is not fully integrated. This chapter investigates whether specific risk factors such as high dependence of the Russian economy on oil prices and currency volatility are priced in the Russian stock market, using International CAPM with time-variant parameters and conditional heteroskedasticity. The results show that the global financial crisis has had a profound negative impact on the Russian market, and that the expected return and liquidity has declined. The risk of investing in the Russian market is estimated as higher than in the developed market and even in other emerging markets after the global recession. We find that oil price exposure and currency risk to be priced in the Russian stock market and indicate that international investors require higher compensation for bearing these risks. The price of the currency risk has decreased since the implementation of the floating exchange rate regime by the Central Bank of Russia in 2014, but still significant.

Some opportunities to overcome the present stagnation and drive for a sustainable development are discussed.

This chapter elaborates on Industry 4.0 and the Internet of Things to develop a strategy of optimization and achieve sustainable industrial development of Russia. We propose a framework strategy for perfecting the process of management of Industry 4.0 in Russia. The provision of the development strategy with financial resources is to be ensured by a public–private partnership and implementation of transnational initiatives for cooperation in the sphere of Industry 4.0. The critical result of this chapter is that Industry 4.0 must become a top-priority direction of modernization and sustainable growth.

The chapter is devoted to the analysis of industrial development in Russia since 2005. Characteristic features of the Russian industry are considered. It is shown that the Russian industry is specific both by its structure and its high heterogeneity. The mining and quarrying sector and related manufacturing industries play a significant role in the Russian economy and major role in industrial production. In the foreseeable future, these sectors can strengthen their leading positions.

Considerable attention is paid to the analysis of the industrial policy of the Russian government, which has traditionally been one of the leading actors of industrial development. The main directions of industrial policy are singled out: compensation of negative changes, catching-up, and advance development. It is noted that the role of the government is ambivalent: on the one hand, it seeks to develop high-performing companies, including new and fast-growing ones, and on the other hand, it often supports large, low-performing enterprises. With the declared continuous emphasis of industrial policy on innovation and modernization, low innovativeness of Russian companies remains. Based on the analysis of modern conditions, as well as new objects and instruments of industrial policy, some prospects for future industrial development have been revealed.

This chapter elaborates on the role of clusters and innovational networks in Russia and interprets that the future growth of Russia’s economy depends on the development of clusters and innovational networks. We substantiated that clusters and innovational networks possess considerable potential in the sphere of provision of sustainable growth of Russia’s economy. Today, this potential is not used due to unequal distribution of clusters and innovational networks on Russia’s vast territory and due to their being at the initial stage of development – despite their prolonged period of existence. However, even in the current conditions, clusters and innovational networks make a significant contribution to Russia’s GDP (15.58% in 2018). By 2024, by implementing our described optimal scenario of clusters and innovational networks development, it would be possible to expand Russia’s GDP by 15 times, which will allow increasing the country’s GDP by 2.5 times. This positive effect will be achieved due to the provision of balance and stability of economic growth, which will make it more sustainable. Clusters and innovational networks should become a basis for sustainable growth of Russia’s economy. We recommend a scenario of sustainable growth based on a more equal distribution of clusters and innovational networks across Russia and a quicker development of clusters and innovational networks via more extensive involvement of private businesses.

This chapter elaborates the peculiarities for the formation of the circular economy, substantiates its current contribution and future potential as to economic growth, and elaborates the concept and the implementation of the circular economy in Russia. Russian projects in the sphere of sustainable development and “ecologization” (reduction in energy, resource consumption, and polluting emissions) of industrial productions, mitigation, and processing of waste, protection of water resources, and restoration of forests are built into the linear model of production. The performed calculations on the basis of the existing statistical data allow evaluating the scale of the circular economy in Russia at $ 755.05 billion (as GDP in current market prices is 30.97% provided by the volume of used and decontaminated waste of production and consumption). In future, it is highly probable that the scale of the circular economy in Russia will reach 50% of GDP – $ 950.95 billion (as of 2018). To accelerate the rate and quality of economic growth, positive results from the implementation of these projects must be achieved. Complete transition to the model of the circular economy can provide new possibilities for long-term growth and the development of the Russian economy.

The purpose of the chapter is to study peculiarities of formation of “green economy” in Russia and to substantiate the perspectives of its development by technological parks. The “green economy” is just appearing in Russia, as its volume is 4% of GDP as of now, with a downward trend for the recent 10 years. Favorable conditions for the formation of “green economy” are created in technological parks due to the attraction of the necessary volume of investments and increased state regulation. Technological park ‘Sinarsky’, West-Siberian innovational center (Tyumen technological park), and technological park of high-tech of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug show “green” initiatives. However, their share in the total structure of technological parks of Russia is only 2%. The volume of “green” investments in technological parks of Russia constitutes RUB 0.58 billion, and the volume of “green” production – RUB 9.153 billion, with 3,980 “green” jobs. The developed authors’ concept and the offered practical recommendations allow for the deeper study of the potential of technological parks in the context of the “green economy” in Russia. According to the forecast, their implementation will allow ensuring achievement of the share of “green” technological parks in their structure at the level of 30%, thus increasing the volume of “green” investments in Russia’s technological parks to RUB 7.888 billion: the volume of “green” production to RUB 124.48 billion, and the number of “green” jobs to 54,128. “Green” development of technological parks will allow increasing the volume of “green” economy in Russia by 3.2% until 2025.

The chapter considers the significance of the oil and gas industry for the Russian economy. The authors analyze the current state of the oil and gas industry, their specific weight in the structure of Russian GDP, and tax revenues from this industry to the Russian budget that was estimated. We give scenario analysis that considers the problems that the Russian economy may face because of the sanctions, the price fluctuations at the commodity market, and the crisis phenomena in the world economy. The chapter points out that localization of technology production and development of technologies for offshore oil and gas production in the Arctic zone may become an incentive to further ensure import substitution for Russia. At present, the experience of Arctic defense enterprises in the production of equipment for oil and gas production and processing is becoming increasingly popular. The chapter elaborates the most significant examples of the creation of new industries in the Arctic zone, the prospects of seismic exploration on the Arctic shelf, and that localization of production capacities and service bases will allow obtaining a multiplicative incentive for a qualitatively new industrial and infrastructure development of the northern territories. Also, we provide an assessment of the development of liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry, which makes economically attractive use of natural gas on a regional level as LNG opens the way to fuel high-power needs and to long-distance transport.

The estimates by both Russian and foreign authoritative organizations show the signs of the transition from stagnation to moderate growth, and this process should be accounted for by the largest transnational corporations (TNCs) traditionally active in Russia, such as Coca-Cola, Nestle, Adidas, and others. However, despite the optimistic predictions of many analysts, macroeconomic (and geopolitical) situation in the world remains unstable. Russia is aiming at the trajectory of economic growth in the face of continuing pressure from the macroeconomic, foreign policy, and internal institutional factors. In response to this strain, the government has intensified efforts to implement the strategy of import substitution, which objectively affects the interests of TNCs at the Russian markets. The objective process of import substitution creates both challenges and opportunities for TNCs. Problems are connected with a direct displacement of their traditional products and brands due to both administrative restrictions and a change in consumer attitudes and preferences (“Buy Russian” approach gaining momentum). However, the opportunities lie within the participation in the future satiation of demand and fulfilling the consumer expectations during the upcoming revival of the positive economic dynamics. It can generally be noted that the TNCs should integrate into a specific project of import substitution in the postcrisis environment despite the variety of their corporate policies. This relatively new situation for TNCs in the context of general economic and geopolitical instability requires scenario modeling of the possible strategies of TNCs depending on both the overall macroeconomic and political situation in the country, as well as the internal factors affecting various commodity markets in Russia.

This chapter considers anti-Russia sanctions and their role in the country’s sustainable development. The authors consider sanctions against Russia in the general context of restrictive measures as an instrument of international economic activity. The nature of the anti-Russia sanctions is analyzed in the chapter. A chronology of the introduction of restrictive measures against Russia is discussed. The authors consistently examine the negative consequences and positive aspects of the anti-Russia sanctions in the general political and economic context. Due to duplicitous implications of the sanctions, attention is paid to the import phaseout policy, which has been proclaimed and implemented by Russia. In addition, reciprocal restrictive measures (counter-sanctions), which are introduced by Russia in response to the actions against the country, have been considered in the chapter. Regarding the Russian economy as an inherent part of the world economy, the authors present their conclusions on how reciprocal restrictive measures cause damage to the interests of all parties involved in the process.

One of the most important economic processes in the world economy over the recent decades has been increasing fragmentation of international production that resulted in expansion of global value chains (GVCs). National economies started to get involved in GVCs in order to get value-added gains from this participation; Russia is not an exception. To analyze Russia’s GVCs participation, we need to adopt new statistical methodology based on input–output approach that allows estimating trade flows in terms of value added, including foreign and domestic value added as parts of gross exports. The author comes to the conclusion that Russia’s participation in GVCs was growing during the last decades mostly by forward participation connected with supply of oil and gas along GVC; moreover, Russia had net gains from this participation. Future trends in Russia’ involvement in GVCs can be described by two scenarios. The first one is based on expanding forward manufacturing participation in order to increase and diversify nonoil exports. This scenario is strongly supported by Russian Federation Ministry for Economic Development. The second scenario covers the continuation of mineral participation in GVCs that Russia implements till now. Both scenarios have their pro and contra. The author argues that the first scenario is better correlated with long-term economic interests and possibilities for sustainable development in Russia.

This chapter considers scenarios for the development of the Russian economy in the medium term under the “new reality” conditions, with the latter implying a slowdown in China’s economic growth rate, lower commodity prices, rising geopolitical tensions, and the rapid development of digital technologies leading to the fourth scientific and technological revolution. The results of scenario calculations show that the implementation of the economic growth target scenario requires targeted efforts to increase human capital, increase investment in fixed assets and innovation, export diversification, and achieve perfection in the quality of political and economic institutions. Sustainable growth of 3% per year in the medium term is possible only with the restructuring of the economy; otherwise, even with favorable conditions in the commodity markets and higher efficiency of the existing economic system, it is impossible to achieve high rates of economic growth necessary to significantly improve the quality of life.