The economy’s resilience to shocks at the macro- and meso-levels: Typology and conditions

Abstract

A study of the economy’s resilience to external shocks has an important methodological aspect, which is primarily associated with significant interregional differences in the structure of reproduction, GDP, employment, innovation, budget revenues, exports and imports outside the region and country. On the other hand, the meso-level specificity of sustainability is also manifested in the trends of macro- and meso-economic dynamics, which directly determines the depth of the non-cyclical recession as a result of shocks and the pace of post-shock recovery. In the context of the increasing impact of external shocks on the Russian economy, the search for ways to increase its stability, the definition of the principles of analysis and the conditions for achieving it are of particular relevance. Considering the multi-structural and diversified nature of the Russian economy, its territorial extent, it would be methodologically correct to analyze the resilience to shocks at the macro- and meso-levels. The key aim of analyzing the economy’s resilience to shocks is to determine its typology and conditions for achieving it in the long term. An important aspect of studying the economy’s resilience to shocks is the analysis of the relationship between their impact and the phases of economic cycles and phase transitions. In this article, the authors aim to consider the problem of increasing the stability of the Russian economy based on international experience and the presented typology of shocks, starting from the structural conditions of post-shock development in the new economic reality. The functional sustainability of the economy is presented as the achievement of the high productivity and competitiveness of domestic production, connected in multi-link production chains with high added value, operating in conditions of low inflation and availability of resources. The authors show that existing approaches consider shocks in micro-, meso- and macro-economic aspects. They hypothesize that achieving the economy’s sustainability to shocks in all their multidimensionality is possible when implementing conditions associated with the initiation of positive structural changes in it. Such conditions are: a high share of high-tech services and export-oriented industries in the structure of the economy, a mismatch between the cyclical phase of its decline and the impact of a shock, moderate pre-shock growth rates, a developed scientific and educational system and a high level of workers’ education in a region, a low differentiation of the population’s income. The authors conclude that shocks have a complex impact on the economy (exogenous shocks can provoke endogenous ones, and vice versa) and a dual effect, which consists in the ability to strengthen resilience to shocks through the growth of public investment in R&D in the absence of foreign investment, the acceleration of innovative modernization of the industry, and the formation of new social groups on this basis.