Macroeconomic policies in Russia 1995–2025 : from barter arrangements to an emerging war economy

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the major changes in Russia’s macroeconomic policies since the early 1990s. For decades, the quest for economic stability and security have been leading principles of Russian macroeconomic policies. To understand the genesis of these macroeconomic policy choices the paper first provides a chronology of macroeconomic policies from the early 1990’s to the aftermath of the global pandemic thirty years later. The second part describes how since the full-scale invasion on Ukraine, Western economic sanctions and the emerging war economy have fundamentally changed Russia’s policy choices in fiscal and monetary policies as well as in Russia’s trade relations.