Financial development and economic growth nexus in Russia

This paper examines the finance-growth nexus in Russia with the vector autoregression model, taking oil prices and foreign exchange rates into account. The analyzed period is from 1999 through 2008 (Subperiod 1) and from 2009 through 2014 (Subperiod 2). The results for Subperiod 1 suggest that there is causality from economic growth to money supply and bank lending, which implies demand-following responses. The results for Subperiod 2 show that economic growth Granger causes bank lending while there is no causality from money supply to economic growth, which could be related to the dramatic decrease in the amount of intervention in foreign exchange markets.