Russia is one of the world's largest growing economies. With this exciting new growth and development, there is a wealth of knowledge to be discovered from the strategies and models being used and created throughout Russia's economy.

Based on the 2017 conference "'New Reality' and Russian Markets" held at Harvard University, this book brings together world-renowned thinkers to offer the latest empirical research on recent financial risks, institutional policies, and financial stability.

Sixteen years after the Soviet Union's demise, the Russian economy can still be appropriately characterized as transitional. The authors shed light on ambiguities surrounding this status through an exploration of four questions related to issues of interest to government decisionmakers.

By 1999, Russia's economy was growing at almost 7% per year, and by 2008 reached 11th place in the world GDP rankings. Russia is now the world's second largest producer and exporter of oil, the largest producer and exporter of natural gas, and as a result has the third largest stock of foreign exchange reserves in the world, behind only China and Japan. But while this impressive economic growth has raised the average standard of living and put a number of wealthy Russians on the Forbes billionaires list, it has failed to solve the country's deep economic and social problems inherited from the Soviet times. Russia continues to suffer from a distorted economic structure, with its low labor productivity, heavy reliance on natural resource extraction, low life expectancy, high income inequality, and weak institutions. While a voluminous amount of literature has studied various individual aspects of the Russian economy, in the West there has been no comprehensive and systematic analysis of the socialist legacies, the current state, and future prospects of the Russian economy gathered in one book. The Oxford Handbook of the Russian Economy fills this gap by offering a broad range of topics written by the best Western and Russian scholars of the Russian economy. While the book's focus is the current state of the Russian economy, the first part of the book also addresses the legacy of the Soviet command economy and offers an analysis of institutional aspects of Russia's economic development over the last decade. The second part covers the most important sectors of the economy. The third part examines the economic challenges created by the gigantic magnitude of regional, geographic, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity of Russia. The fourth part covers various social issues, including health, education, and demographic challenges. It will also examine broad policy challenges, including the tax system, rule of law, as well as corruption and the underground economy. Michael Alexeev and Shlomo Weber provide for the first time in one volume a complete, well-rounded, and essential look at the complex, emerging Russian economy.

Globalization proceeds apace, taking on new forms that impact global economic, financial and social processes. Interdependence is not simply strengthening the range of possibilities for national economies to participate in, and advantage of, these developments, but expanding the opportunities that are available to them. The question is how do states take advantage of these global developments. Russia is no exception. Although it actively participates in the globalization process, it is, however, confronting greater economic, technological, structural and institutional problems than other countries. At the same time, there is dwindling hope for favourable conditions to continue in global energy markets, which are crucial to the Russian economy. These problems exist alongside the risk that the widening gap between Russia and other economies in terms of economic performance and technological development and growth will continue. Russia now stands at the crossroads of either overcoming or exacerbating these current challenges. This choice dictates the current realities of pax economica. Moscow must, in the very near future, make meaningful, if not fundamental, decisions aimed at further opening its economy, improving its institutions, and strengthening its international ties. This task is made more difficult by Russia's weakening competitiveness and by its ambiguous position on the international division of labour. The old model of Russian development has been exhausted and a new one must be chosen. Russia's choice at this juncture will determine the future of its economic development for many years to come.

The contributors to this volume analyze the present state of the Russian economy and its future prospects - which now seem brighter than at any previous time in the country's history. The Russian economy is now showing positive GDP growth and a positive balance of payments, portending a trend of sustained growth. The record of the Putin presidency with respect to the establishment of market-friendly legal and administrative environments is substantially positive. On the other side of the ledger, the contributors identify the persistence of monopolies in energy, transportation, and agriculture; distortions resulting from corruption, infrastructural inadequacies, and the maldistribution of political power and decision-making authority; demographic decline and the erosion of human capital as manifested in the health, education, and welfare of the population. Russia's successful development as a democratic society with a market economy is of great importance to its neighbors and to the global economy, and specifically to the United States, which is why the U.S. Congress commissioned these studies by expert analysts. This edition includes a comprehensive subject index, making the volume user-friendly.

This book presents theoretical and empirical investigation of economic growth in Russia. The sharp decline in the national production that Russia endured in the 1990s, linked directly to the exhausting and ill-planned transition from the planned economy to the market economy, resulted in Russia plunging into the poverty trap. The goal of this book is to determine whether and how Russia manages to overcome the poverty trap and initiate and sustain economic growth. This book fills the gap between the volatile economic growth as an objective economic reality of Russia and the lack of scholarly literature on the issue. This study identifies the place and role of foreign aid in economic growth in the market-type post-transitional Russian economy and concludes that foreign aid does not play any significant role in the national economy, contrary to what would follow from the classical poverty trap theory, considered, reviewed, applied and tested in this study. Development economists should not overestimate the role of foreign aid in overcoming the poverty trap in those developing economic systems that are currently not in equilibrium and only move toward their steady state. The book will be of interest to those who want to learn more about specific problems in Russia’s newly built capitalism, the country’s perspectives and its current semi-peripheral status. The book will also be an excellent supplement for students in Russian studies programs, as well as for investors who want to do business in Russia and try to understand the country’s domestic economic conditions and processes.

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