Forecasting the impact of anti-sanction economic policy on the region's economy

Abstract

Subject: the intensive imposition of economic sanctions on Russia began in 2014. Their range has been expanding throughout the period to date. The imposed sanctions have a contradictory impact on the economy of the country and certain regions, determined by the structure of their economies and the anti-sanctions measures taken at the federal and regional levels. At present, the scientific literature mainly provides «ex post facto» studies that characterize the state of various spatial and functional subsystems of Russia subject to the sanctions imposed already. Purpose: at the same time, it is essential to forecast the consequences of sanctions and anti-sanctions activities undertaken by different authorities in order to mitigate sanctions' effects. The forecast for the effectiveness of the anti-sanctions measures taken in Russia is the goal of this research. Research design: predicting the effects of economic sanctions is a significant challenge due to the varied influence vectors of sanctions. This applies to a greater extent to the prediction of sanctions to be imposed. In this case, it is impossible to use factual data, making expert evaluation the only possible way of forecasting. This research involved the results of a survey of three groups of experts in the Voronezh Region: 1) representatives of business, 2) representatives of the executive body of state authority (EBSA) 3) representatives of the academic staff (AS). The importance and the probability of anti-sanctions measures were assessed on a point scale from 2 to 5. The consistency degree of the experts' opinions was accounted for by the variation coefficient. Results: the calculations based on expert data showed that the significance level of 10 out of 30 formulated measures was not identified. None of the measures was predicted to be highly significant by any of the expert groups. The following activities: federal subsidies for servicing loans aimed at increasing sales of products and improving competitiveness; federal tax incentives for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to increase working capital and develop enterprises; federal subsidies for the development and production of new products and modernization of the product line; federal subsidies to stimulate demand for Russian industrial products; regional subsidies to organizations implementing especially important investment projects; regional tax benefits to SMEs for investment purposes and innovative development. The implementation probability of these measures is esti-mated by the representatives of business and the AS lower than the significance. Experts of the EBSA predict a high probability of their implementation. Consistency in the opinions of the experts in each group is mostly medium and lower.