Lending is a political issue in Russia

Abstract

We extend our previous work on bank lending around elections in Russia’s electoral autocracy (Fungáčová et al., 2023) by considering the most recent data on bank lending and 2024 presidential election. Unlike the elections held between 2004 and 2019, our findings show no systematic evidence of increased bank lending ahead the 2024 presidential election. This reduced political interference in pre-election lending since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 may reflect a tendency towards traditional autocracy in Russia.