Regional volatility in emerging countries: the case of Russia

An uneven distribution of natural resources and the Soviet legacy of artificial regional specialization expose Russia's regions to large income shocks. Using an unique regional dataset covering Russian regions between 1992 and 2003, we assess how these features influence the magnitude and persistence of regional income shocks. We propose a novel measure of regional exogenous shocks that we use to show that fiscal policy in Russia's regions has largely been pro-cyclical, exacerbating rather than moderating regional exogenous shocks. Reprinted by permission of Blackwell Publishers