Financial Journal

p. 25-39

Authors: Alexander D. Andryakov

Introduction of unfinanced federal mandates connected to the May President Orders in 2012 together with steady reduction in real terms of federal transfers to regions resulted in the loss of regional budget sustainability and balance in the major part of the Russian Federation subjects. Regions began to accumulate state debt in amounts greater than Budget Code restrictions. In order to allow them to obey the Budget Code these restrictions have been soften by excluding federal loans from regional debt limits established in the Budget Code. Obviously, this exemption did not reduce any regional debt or budget obligations themselves. In result by the beginning of 2017 more than half of all Russian regions fell into budget sustainability crisis. This paper discusses the reasons of the regional budget sustainability and balance losses in detail, as well as possible approaches to recovery from that crisis.

p. 50-63

Authors: Roman S. Leukhin, Aleksandra L. Suslina

This paper covers the topic of labour taxes progressivity in Russia and reviews possible reforms of personal income tax. Using their own tax wedge calculations the authors determine that Russia is one of a few countries with regressive labour taxation (in most other considered countries it is progressive). The calculation results show as well that labour tax burden in Russia is not high in comparison with OECD countries and a little bit higher than the average level of emerging markets. The authors also calculate tax reliefs progressivity using the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey and the Federal Tax Service data. Moreover, in this article the authors estimate the impact of different personal income tax reforms on the Russian budget and inequality.

p. 75-84

Authors: Marat R. Zembatov

This article describes development problems of a formalized method for determining the presence of counterparty risk factors. This method can be used as an unbiased feature that allows to predict and prevent the risk of conditions for unreasonable growth of public expenditure, due to suits against public bodies involved in public procurement.

p. 98-109

Authors: Mariya N. Kirillova, Ol’ga F. Seliverstova

The article discusses social support measures aimed at improvement of the provided social support to families with children, including support to low-income families. The authors analyze the size of benefits provided to different types of families and the number of such measures in different regions of Russia. The types of families analyzed include large families, single-parent families and low-income families with children. The analysis shows that there is a certain common set of regional social benefits available across all regions, as well as diverse region-specific benefits, the size, the purpose and the parameters of which match the diversity of regional socio-demographic circumstances, welfare policies and budgets. Since in Russia the provision of social support benefits is predominantly the responsibility of regional administrations, the number and the size of benefits provided to families with children depend on the financial and economic capacity of the region where they reside. The authors also show that single-parent families in Russia experience higher risks of material deprivation, than large families.

p. 121-130

Authors: Konstantin S. Proshin, Alexander M. Shaykin

Discussion on ways of further development of agricultural insurance in Russia has become more active due to import substitution policy pursued by Russian government. This article is focused on to study of possible approaches to implementing area-yield index agricultural insurance in the Russian Federation. It also coveres possible methods of state support for this type of insurance and the role of JSC “Russian National Reinsurance Company” in providing reinsurance programs on the national market.