金融危機・石油価格下落下のロシア経済

抄録

There are three conundrums as for the relation between the Russian economy and the Sub-Prime financial crisis. Firstly, it is not clear why Russia’s GDP has been damaged so severely after the crisis comparing with other leading countries including China. Secondly, we have not yet found out a main process through which the American crisis reached Russia. Because Russian financial institutions did not have Sub-Prime-related securities so much, it does not stand to reason that they suffered the same kind of turbulence as British or German banks had. Thirdly, why such a basically financial affair as the Sub-Prime crisis has had a serious effect on economic real sectors of Russia is not easy to understand. In the case of the financial crisis in 1998 the real sectors of Russia did not have close connections with its financial sectors and therefore they did not receive serious damages from the financial sectors. Have the connections between the real sectors and financial sectors in Russia strengthened considerably in the last ten years? Among these three conundrums this article tries to answer to the last two and give a hint to the first one. As for the second conundrum the author insists that foreign financial institutions, which had held much Sub-Prime-related assets, withdrew their capital from Russia to compensate their losses in the crisis, which in turn brought Russian financial institutions into a difficult situation. As for the third one it is emphasized that the real and financial sectors in Russia have not yet achieved modern close relationship and that we must find another factor that led to economic difficulties of the real sectors of Russia. For example, the so-called financial deepening cannot be considered to have proceeded sufficiently in Russia if compared to Japan, England, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. As for the first one the author suggests that decrease of “terms of trade effect” after the crisis, which occurred because of oil price decline, might have been one of the important factors for GDP setback. By explaining about these three conundrums the author clarifies a special economic structure of Russia: vulnerability to foreign shocks.