For citation:
Orekhovsky, P. A., & Plushchevskaya, Y. L. (2026). Financialization in Russia: Ideology and Statistics. AlterEconomics, 23(2), 272–293. https://doi.org/10.31063/AlterEconomics/2026.23-2.2
Abstract:
Between 2010 and 2013, Russian authorities pursued an initiative to transform Moscow into an international financial center, anticipating that the financial sector would drive post-industrial growth in line with Western trajectories. However, rising geopolitical tensions and sanctions have since fuelled domestic criticism of financialization, echoing negative assessments prevalent in foreign scholarship. At the same time, the absence of a consensus definition has produced significant variation in methodologies and estimates. This study adopts a broad definition of financialization, which is understood as the growth of the financial sector at the expense of other spheres, and tests whether this phenomenon exists in Russia. The analysis examines the financial sector’s share of the economy over the past two decades and the effects of the Bank of Russia’s key rate on transactions between the real and financial sectors, drawing primarily on sectoral accounts from the System of National Accounts (SNA). The statistical evidence does not support the existence of financialization in Russia. This finding suggests that ideological preferences among economists may lead to erroneous diagnoses and misguided calls to combat a condition that is not, in fact, present in the Russian economy.
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