Financial Journal

p. 9-20

Authors: Olga K. Yastrebova

The article examines the issues related to formation and financing of a state assignment in the context of electronic budget and new requirements for justification of standard costs. The author aims to analyze the experience of application of state assignment and standard costs in a new environment, to identify and structure the associated methodological and practical problems, and to justify the proposed solutions. The analysis reveals how substantial is the problem of non-compliance with provision of the regulatory legal framework for the formation of state assignment and standard costs by federal departments. Based on the analysis of new requirements for calculation of standard costs, the author concludes that implementation requires a complex, analytical and methodological work. The article shows that a significant number of departments are not ready for such work in terms of the lack of necessary information about expenditures of their subordinated bodies as well as lack of modern tools for costs accounting. The article also provides the example of successful experience of standard costs formation and specifies the necessary preconditions for that. The author analyzes the features of public services characteristics that influence formation of state assignment and standard costs calculation. In addition, the author proposes to balance requirements for the formation of standard costs with sectoral features and to moderate the existing requirements for standard costs calculation for a number of public services, taking into account objective restrictions. The author emphasizes the necessity to introduce modern tools for costs accounting in public entities.

p. 34-43

Authors: Dmitry N. Ershov

The provision of state guarantees in the planning and implementation of investments is a common instrument of state support and attraction of additional financial sources to large infrastructure projects. On the other hand, risks resulting from government guarantees may adversely affect the sustainability of the budget system. In order to neutralize such risks, a system of investment risk management arising from government support of investments is applied. In recent years to minimize the risks with regard to the budget, many countries undertake legislative and procedural changes related to the provision of state guarantees. The article is devoted to the modern practice of state guarantees provision, while planning and implementing large investment infrastructure projects on the example of Germany and France. Among the considered issues are the legal framework, procedures and conditions for the provision of state guarantees. Certain elements of state guarantees system of Germany and France could be examples for possible introduction in Russia.

p. 56-65

Authors: Ivan V. Nikonov, Arseny S. Sirotkin

The article describes the development features of the retail lending in the Russian Federation after 2015–2016 recession period. The authors indicate the recent trends in the retail credit market through the analysis of mortgage and retail loan markets performance with a breakdown by groups of country regions. Groups of regions are defined by the credit growth ratio and personal income level. The groups of regions have such characteristics as living standards, dynamics of the credit growth and past due debt in different retail lending segments, and household bank deposits. The authors determine the highest retail credit growth in regions with the higher-than-average personal debt-to-income ratio, while the mortgages and retail loans show mostly proportionate dynamics in the overall retail credit growth.

p. 76-87

Authors: Andrey A. Kozlov, Andrey V. Vlasov

In the field of cryptoeconomics the Ethereum (Ethereum Foundation) project gave opportunity to create “own” cryptocurrency – new token based on its smart-contract platform to everyone without lowlevel programming skills. Then it became obvious that tokens could be used for crowdfunding as the Ethereum did in 2014. Unregulated and easy to access such scheme became popular among related to the blockchain tech startups. It was named Initial Coin Offering (ICO/or ITO). Despite its name, which is similar to IPO, this scheme is usually used for venture funding of a new project instead of expanding already well-established working business. The authors use machine-learning algorithms to classify ICOs and estimate ROI based on public digital data and web-sources. The goal of the research is to develop sustainable and efficient model, which will predict target profit ROI (profit trends) of ICO startup. Data collection and analysis period: Feb-Mar 2018. The prediction model and the application (service) of ICO startups’ selection are developed as the result of the study. Results. There were over 3000 samples of ICO-startups in the research dataset. After cleaning and elimination of outliers, it contained only 518. The number of samples with positive ROI (which means that these ICOs were profitable) was 234. Cross validation metric was confirmed to be accurate. The model achieved 79 % accuracy (average value). To prove this score separated prediction was executed the metrics: for test dataset AUC is 0.78; for profitable samples Precision: 0.76; Recall: 0.9 for profitable; F1-score: 0.82. Discussions. In order to achieve the objectives of this study, various IT components of the service architecture (applications) were developed to monitor, analyze and predict the risks of ICO startups. An artificial neural network was developed to solve the problem of ROI classification and prediction. The average ROI among profitable ICOS was 47 %. Taking into consideration that the crypto market is highly volatile and that there is a possibility that such investments will not bring any profit, this model of monitoring, analysis and prediction can be very valuable for the purposes of critical selection (exclusion) of a number of ICO projects from potential investment. Conclusion. The developed components can be used as a basis of monitoring service of ICO startups. The risk-forecasting model can be improved, foremost, by using the most complete (and wider) set of data. In this case, individual data collection and processing tasks can be performed manually, which will require additional resources. It should be noted that other types of neural networks can be developed for both text analysis and trading data analysis. This may lead to the logic of using a combination of models, which will potentially help to provide the most accurate predictions.

p. 101-109

Authors: Dmitry B. Krylov

The article investigates the influence of the T. Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions on the development of accounting science in the USSR and in the Russian Federation. The author analyzes the usage of the T. Kuhn’s term “paradigm” in the USSR and in Russia and considers its application for periodization of the accounting development history. The analysis determines that during the period from the 1980s to the present the term “paradigm” has been constantly used in accounting science. In general, there are two main areas to use this term. Firstly, the selection of 3–4 basic paradigms in the development history of world accounting science, that has become classic in Russia, and their further detailed definition with the purpose of describing and forecasting the ways of accounting science development. Secondly, the identification of new “potential” paradigms, which will become the basis of “normal” science in the near future. The consideration of accounting as an indivisible science that does not have separate scientific directions with its own paradigms and the non-recognition of pre-paradigm periods in the accounting science development are typical for the Russian scientists.

p. 133-135

Authors: Igor Yu. Varjas

The review of the scientific report “Effects of Institutional Differences and Institutional Rent in the Russian Economy” addresses the problem of institutional heterogeneity of Russian business. Based on the results obtained by the team of INP RAS with implementation of analysis of the financial and economic activities of ferrous metallurgy enterprises and banks, the author defines the theory of economic development heterogeneity. The conclusion of the article discusses the certain suggestions on how to use the proposed theoretical developments in fiscal policy.