Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T21:23:10.908Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Fighting Inflation in a Transitional Regime: Russia's Anomalous Stabilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Daniel S. Treisman
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Get access

Abstract

Russia's recent experience fighting inflation—dramatic success in 1995–96 after repeated failures in 1992–94—poses a challenge for existing theories of the politics of macroeconomic stabilization. Monthly inflation rates fell to close to zero despite a deeply unpopular president distracted by heart disease, a government penetrated by economic lobbies, a far-from-independent central bank, a parliament dominated by opposition factions, a lively election season, and the fiscal pressures of “fighting a regional war. The article reviews this experience, shows its incompatibility with existing political economy theories, and proposes an explanation with implications for other reforming regimes. Success was achieved by offering previous beneficiaries from inflation—major commercial banks and subsidized sectors—other sources of government-protected rents that did not increase the money supply. Even when expropriating powerful rent seekers is politically infeasible, it is sometimes possible to trade them less-inflationary rents for ones that are more inflationary.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for instance, Dornbusch, Rudiger, Sturzenegger, Federico, and Wolf, Holger, “Extreme Inflation: Dynamics and Stabilization,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2 (1990)Google Scholar; Fischer, Stanley, “The Role of Macroeconomic Factors in Growth,” Journal of Monetary Economics 32 (December 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cagan, Phillip, “Hyperinflation,” in Eatwell, John, Milgate, Murray, and Newman, Peter, eds., The New Palgrave: Money (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987)Google Scholar; Blanchard, Olivier et al. , Reform in Eastern Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 15Google Scholar.

2 Geddes, , “Challenging the Conventional Wisdom,” in Diamond, Larry and Plattner, Marc F., eds., Economic Reform and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 72Google Scholar. Though Geddes is studying economic liberalization not stabilization, the view of inflation as the result of incumbents' rent channeling implies that the first is necessary for the second. The association of stabilization with economic liberalization is supported by evidence in World Bank, World Development Report 1996: Fnm Plan to Market (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 39Google Scholar.

3 Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, Sachs, Jeffrey, Poland's Jump to the Market Economy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993)Google Scholar, esp. 44–48.

5 In a different context, Geddes argues that legislatures are more likely to enact reforms to enhance state capacity when “access to resources through clientele networks … [is] more or less equally divided among the larger parties in the political system.” , Geddes, Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 184Google Scholar.

6 Drazen, Allan and Grilli, Vittorio, “The Benefit of Crises for Economic Reforms,” American Economic Review 83 (June 1993), 598Google Scholar; Blanchard et al. (fn. 1), 2.

7 Alesina, Alberto and Drazen, Allan, “Why Are Stabilizations Delayed?” American Economic Review 81 (December 1991)Google Scholar.

8 Fernandez, Raquel and Rodrik, Dani, “Resistance to Reform: Status Quo Bias in the Presence of Individual-Specific Uncertainty,” American Economic Review 81 (December 1991)Google Scholar.

9 Balcerowicz, Leszek, “Understanding Postcommunist Transitions,” Journal of Democracy 5 (October 1994), 8485CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See the following essays in , Åslund, ed., Russian Economic Reform at Risk (New York: Pinter, 1995)Google Scholar; Sergei Vasiliev, “The Political Economy of Russia's Reform”; and Aslund, “The Politics of the Economic Reform: Remaining Tasks.”

11 Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert R., The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 370Google Scholar, 375.

12 Roubini, Nouriel and Sachs, Jeffrey, “Political and Economic Determinants of Budget Deficits in Ac Industrial Democracies,” European Economic Review 33 (May 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grilli, Vittorio, Masciandaro, Donato, and Tabellini, Guido, “Political and Monetary Institutions and Public Financial Policies in Ae Industrial Countries,” in Persson, Torsten and Tabellini, Guido, eds., Monetary and Fiscal Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 2:213.

13 Arbetman, Marina and Kugler, Jacek, “The Politics of Inflation: An Empirical Assessment of the Emerging Market Economies,” in Willett, Thomas D. et al. , eds., Establishing Monetary Stability in Emerging Market Economies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

14 Haggard and Kaufman (fn. 11), 163.

15 Nordhaus, William, “Alternative Approaches to the Political Business Cycle,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2 (1989)Google Scholar.

16 Alt, James and Chrystal, Alec, Political Economics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

17 Karen Remmer found that, while there was no evidence of increased spending in the preelection period in Latin American countries, stabilizations were more likely in the postelection period; Remmer, , “The Political Economy of Elections in Latin America, 1980–91,” American Political Science Review 87 (June 1993)Google Scholar.

18 Haggard, and Webb, , “What Do We Know about the Political Economy of Economic Policy Reform?” World Bank Research Observer 8 (July 1993), 149CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Cukierman, Alex, Edwards, Sebastian, and Tabellini, Guido, “Seignorage and Political Instability,” American Economic Review 82 (June 1992)Google Scholar.

20 See, for example, Maxfield, Sylvia, “Financial Incentives and Central Bank Authority in Industrializing Nations,” World Politics 46 (July 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cukierman, Alex, Central Bant Strategy, Credibility and Independence: Theory and Evidence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

21 Grilli, Masciandaro, and Tabellini (fh. 12).

22 See Cukierman, Edwards, and Tabellini (fn. 19).

23 Dornbusch, Sturzenegger, and Wolf (fh.l), 61.

24 Sachs, “Why Russia Has Failed to Stabilize,” in Aslund (fn.10), 55.

25 Ranis, Gustav and Mahmood, Syed Akhtar, The Political Economy of Development Policy Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar.

26 Rodrik, Dani, “Understanding Economic Policy Reform” Journal of Economic Literature 34 (March 1996), 30Google Scholar.

27 For two detailed accounts, see Åslund, Anders, How Russia Became a Market Economy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Boris Federov, “Monetary Policy and Central Banking in Russia,” East European Constitutional Review (Summer—Fall 1994), 60–66.

28 Åslund (fn. 27), 198.

29 Sachs (fn. 24), 53,62.

30 Izvestia,January 6,1995, 3.

31 Hellman, Joel, “Russia Adjusts to Stability,” Transition 2 (May 17, 1996), 610Google Scholar.

32 Interfax, February 19,1996.

33 All figures calculated from IMF, International Financial Statistics (Washington, D.C.: IMF, April 1996)Google Scholar. Money and quasi money include currency outside banks, demand deposits, time savings, and foreign currency deposits other than those of the central government. For the United States and Mexico, figures are for money supply at the end of June 1995 as a proportion of 1995 GDP; for the others the (latest comparable) figures are for the same ratio as ofJune 1994.

34 Ekspert, June 3,1996,14–15.

35 The deputy prime minister for agriculture, Aleksandr Zaveryukha, lobbied openly for aid to the farming sector, announcing once with no apparent sense of irony that “the country must feed its peasants” (Segodnya, March 28,1995).

36 Izvestia, December 6,1994.

37 Segpdnya, July 20, 1995, 3.

38 Fyodorov in March 1995 delivered a caustic assessment of this economic lineup: “What more can be done under Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin], who every day issues some sort of decision about spending money on the devil knows what? Or under Viktor Stepanovich [Chernomyrdin], who, together with Zaveryukha, will lie low and then—bang!—will blurt out something that costs 10 trillion Yes, this is incompetence, no matter how much you explain it to Chernomyrdin on graphs. They sat there tnd tried: Here's your multiplier, here's the money supply, a three-month lag, and still he doesn't believe it… he thinks they're making a fool of him. The result is plain to see” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 17, 1995, 1, 3).

39 Segodnya, April 6,1995,2.

40 VTsIOM, Monitoring obshchestvennogo mnenia 24 (July-August 1996), 51Google Scholar.

41 Fernandez and Rodrik (fn. 8).

42 Åslund (fn. 10).

43 Nezavisimaya Gazeta (fn. 38). Hellman shows empirically that party fragmentation and coalition government did not prevent stabilization in various other postcommunist states. Joel Hellman, “Competitive Advantage: Political Competition and Economic Reform in Postcommunist Transitions,” British Journal of Political Science (forthcoming).

44 Kirkow, Peter, “Distributional Coalitions, Budgetary Problems and Fiscal Federalism in Russia,” Communist Economies and Economic Transformation 8, no. 3 (1996), 287-88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Boris Fyodorov, “Macroeconomic Policy and Stabilisation in Russia,” in Åslund (fn.10), 15.

46 Hedlund, Stefan and Sundstrom, Niclas, “The Russian Economy after Systemic Change,” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 6 (1996), 907CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Randall W. Stone, “Russia and the IMF: Reputation and Unrestricted Bargaining” (Manuscript, Rochester, 1996).

47 The concept of “stakeholders” was used in an analysis of corporate takeovers in Shleifer, Andrei and Summers, Lawrence H., “Breach of Trust in Hostile Takeovers,” in Auerbach, Alan J., ed., Corporate Takeovers: Causes and Consequences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and it was first applied to Russian reform in Shleifer, Andrei and Vishny, Robert W., “Privatization in Russia: First Steps,” in Blanchard, Olivier, Froot, Kenneth A., and Sachs, Jeffrey D., eds., The Transition in Eastern Europe, vol. 2, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar. For an elaboration of this and other arguments about reform in Russia within the language of stakeholders, see Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman, “Economic Reform in Russia, 1992–1996” (Internal discussion paper, OECD, forthcoming).

48 Easterly, William and Cunha, Paulo Vieira da, “Financing the Storm: Macroeconomic Crisis in Russia,” Economics of Transition 2, no. 4 (1994), 453CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Layard, Richard and Richter, Andrea, “Who Benefits from Cheap Credit in Russia?” Communist Economics and Economic Transformation 6, no. 4 (1994), 463Google Scholar.

50 Easterly and Vieira da Cunha (fh. 48).

51 Layard and Richter (fn. 49).

52 Easterly and Vieira da Cunha (fh. 48).

53 Houerou, Philippe Le, Fiscal Management in the Russian Federation (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1995)Google Scholar, Annex 1, Table Al.

54 Easterly and Vieira da Cunha (fn. 48).

55 Finansovie Izvestia, July 12–18,1993,1.

56 Kommersant’, July 12–18,1993,5.

57 Sachs, Jeffrey and Lipton, David, “Remaining Steps to a Market-Based Monetary System in Russia,” in Åslund, Anders and Layard, Richard, eds., Changing the Economic System in Russia (London: Pinter, 1993), 138Google Scholar. Since Sberbank occupied such a large share of the market and competition in most regions was sparse, its deposit rates acted as a focal point for collusion by potential competitors.

58 Easterly and Vieira da Cunha (fh. 48); Layard and Richter (fn. 49).

59 Author's observation, May 13,1992. The central bank representative was Sergei Ignatiev.

60 Moskovskie Novosti, May 31,1992,14. Besides criticizing high interest rates and reserve requirements, the bankers also accused the central bank of inefficiency in its clearing system and of overzealous regulation.

61 Commersant, February 16,1993,4.

62 Treisman, Daniel, “Contemplating a Postelection Financial Crisis,” Transition 20, October 4, 1996, 3033Google Scholar.

63 Commenant, March 2,1993.

64 Kommtrsant; April 5,1994,52.

65 “T-Bills Get Riskier,” Business in Russia 60 (October 1995), 8889Google Scholar.

66 Eispert, October 7,1996,30.

67 “Commercial Banks: Recent Trends,” Russian Economic Barometer 2 (Summer 1993).Google Scholar

68 Izvestia, July 7,1994,1–2.

69 “Shestoi Syezd ARB, Den'gi I Kredit 4 (1996), 2122Google Scholar.

70 For a discussion of the details, see Hellman (fn. 31).

71 Omri Daily Digest, February 27,1995. Zhirinovsky's LDP also voted overwhelmingly for the government's proposal.

72 For comparison, the 1995 budget included planned total spending of 40.5 trillion rubles (about $7.9 billion) on industry, energy, construction, agriculture, and fishing; see Kirkow (fn. 44).

73 Delovie Lyudi, May 1996,146–48. The oil company Yukos was being paid for only 60 percent of its deliveries in early 1995; Segodnya, March 21,1995,3.

74 OMRI Daily Report, May 30,1996.

75 Ekspert, October 24,1995,32.

76 Ekspert, June 3,1996,16–19.

77 Peter Rutland, “Russia's Energy Empire under Strain,” Transition, May 3,1996, 6–11.

78 Ibid.

79 Ekspert, March 4,1996,31.

80 Segodnya, March 13,1996,1.