Financial Journal

p. 27-44

Authors: Larisa V. Sannikova

The introduction of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) requires an appropriate legal framework. Its absence creates serious legal and reputational risks that may undermine citizens' confidence in the new digital form of national currency. The purpose of this article is to explore the approaches to the formation of the legal basis for the functioning of CBDCs based on the analysis of foreign experience and Russian legislation. The article highlights the legal features of CBDCs that allow to distinguish them from other state digital financial instruments. The author proposes a legal taxonomy of retail CBDCs, revealing the legal consequences of the choice of CBDC design. Special attention is paid to the problem of legal balance between user privacy and security. The article investigates legal approaches to the regulation of CBDC of foreign countries, primarily China. The author analyses the legislation on the digital ruble, which showed the insufficiency of legal guarantees to protect the rights of citizens — users of the digital ruble platform, which may negatively affect public confidence in the digital ruble.

p. 61-78

Authors: Evgeny N. Timushev, Vita A. Yagovkina

The article considers the main characteristics of the Russian Federation subjects’ reserve funds analyzes the factors of their formation and assesses their effectiveness through the lens of the regions’ countercyclical fiscal policy. In theory, reserve funds serve not only as a source of additional budgetary funds, but also as an instrument of anti-crisis policy and financial stability. In practice, the reserve funds of Russian regions are believed not to fulfill the designated tasks, although the number of relevant studies is extremely limited. The latter determines the relevance of this study. The authors establish that the regional reserve fund of the subject as a public-law entity was established only in about half of the Russian regions and in many respects their creation coincided with the recovery growth after the crisis of 2009–2010. The theoretical provisions are also consistent with the fact that on average the reserve fund is owned by the entities whose economy is more dependent on the mining industry, has greater fiscal capacity, is less subsidized and has a lower level of debt. At the same time, greater fiscal capacity or debt sustainability can hardly be considered as factors in the creation of reserve funds. A number of models are constructed to assess the effectiveness of reserve funds of Russian regions from the point of view of countercyclical fiscal policy. It is concluded that reserve funds in their current form are ineffective for smoothing regional expenditures and maintaining overall fiscal stability. Nevertheless, many questions remain in this topic, including alternative model specifications and evaluation techniques. Based on the results obtained, the directions for further research are formulated.

p. 94-116

Authors: Artem I. Potapov

The implementation of a margin system in derivatives markets has a positive effect on market liquidity and market pricing efficiency. At the same time, portfolio diversification and hedging are not fully taken into account when assessing margin requirements. Therefore, in order to comply with regulatory requirements, the exchange sets excessive margins. IAs Charoula Daskalaki and George Skiadopoulos have shown, overestimation of margin requirements reduces the positive effect of the existence of a margin system. However, quantification of this observation has not been presented in studies before. This paper quantifies the dependence of market liquidity on the level of margin. The study is conducted on data from futures contracts for 19 underlying assets traded on the Moscow Exchange between 2014 and 2021, using an autoregressive moving average model with exogenous factors (ARMAX). The stability of the obtained results is determined by comparing different model specifications with different sliding window sizes. The analysis not only confirmed the fact that margin requirements, which protect the exchange's capital, reduce the positive effect of implementing a margin system but also allowed to evaluate it quantitatively: a 1% increase in margin requirements in relative terms reduces trading volume from 2.5 to 7% and the volume of open positions from 0.2 to 0.9%, depending on the type of position and trader. The impact on trading volume is on average stable over time, and there are local trends and tipping points for the volume of open positions.

p. 133-149

Authors: Mikhail E. Kosov, Ekaterina V. Golubtsova, Ekaterina S. Novikova

The relevance of this research is defined by the importance of the Far Eastern Federal District in the context of reorientation of Russia’s logistics and infrastructure from West to East. The aim of the paper is to test the hypothesis about the positive impact of the used measures of state financial regulation on the development of the Far Eastern Federal District in order to solve its key problems. The authors faced the task to analyze and develop essential measures of state financial regulation at the regional level. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the development of those measures taking into account the changing importance of the region in Russia’s trade turnover. The practical relevance consists in the possibility of using the results in the development of public financial policy in the region. In addition, the article considers key problems of the region, the solution of which will have a positive impact on the country’s economic growth and can be achieved through the government financial measures suggested by the authors. Such measures include increasing the capacity of the Far East sea ports, which means the simultaneous development of the Russian logistical infrastructure, primarily railway infrastructure, to organize uninterrupted delivery of goods to the ports of the region; changing the structure of the trade turnover with a shift towards the export of high-tech products; solving the demographic problems and increasing the scientific and technological potential of the Russian Far East. The results of this study can be used to analyze other Russian regions in order to increase the economic potential of the country as a whole.