Russian Federation: Selected Issues
IMF Staff Country Reports, August 2, 2019
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- Russian Federation: Selected Issues
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Bibliographic details
- Published: August 2, 2019
- Series: IMF Staff Country Reports
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513509716.002
Summary and main findings
- Focus: potential to improve government efficiency and reduce opportunities for corruption in Russia by further improving fiscal transparency.
- Context: analysis carried out in the context of the 2018 Framework for Enhanced IMF Engagement in Governance.
- Cross-country evidence: fiscal transparency is broadly and robustly correlated with better outcomes, including:
- lower financing costs;
- better efficiency of public investment and revenue collection;
- improved corruption perceptions.
- The IMF’s fiscal transparency evaluations provide an alternative to the Open Budget Survey.
Analysis and methodology
- Empirical approach: panel regressions are used to investigate the impact of fiscal transparency on corruption perceptions and to investigate the possibility of omitted variables.
- Limitations: regressions analysis can mitigate the risk of omitted variables but leaves the issue of causality unresolved.
- Broader inference: fully disentangling all the causal links among corruption, institutions, and economic development may not be feasible.
Policy implications and recommendations
- Improve fiscal transparency as a lever to:
- enhance government efficiency;
- reduce opportunities for corruption;
- lower public-sector financing costs;
- increase the efficiency of public investment and revenue collection.
- Use IMF fiscal transparency evaluations as a diagnostic and reform-targeting tool alongside existing measures such as the Open Budget Survey.
International Monetary Fund. European Dept. "Russian Federation: Selected Issues", IMF Staff Country Reports 2019, 261 (2019).
Content in this bundle
- Russian Federation: Selected Issues ; IMF Country Report No. 19/261; June 25, 2019