The Structural Analysis of Russia’s Economic Growth: Measuring, the COVID-19 Crisis and Macroeconomic Policy

The current economic crisis has become a force majeure circumstance in the development of the world system and has shown a completely new source-generator of crisis dynamics—self-restraints affecting the characteristics of the demand of macroeconomic dynamics. This raises the problem of not only eliminating the crisis, but also entering a new growth trajectory. The research is devoted to the analysis of the Russian economy structural dynamics with the identification of its characteristics, the main determinants in order to make a conclusion about the influence of economic structure elements on economic growth, which leaves the main goal. And also, the purpose of the study was to assess the “COVID crisis” and the parameters of the pre-crisis dynamics, which reflected the troubles in maintaining economic growth in Russia. The research methodology is based on the use of structural analysis, which identifies the components of GDP by expenditure, income, and sectors, determining their contribution to economic growth. Thus, it is possible to identify the model of the of economic growth structure. The impact of the sectoral structure on economic dynamics is assessed for three sectors—manufacturing, raw materials and transaction and separately for two sectors—transactional and non-transactional. The research results in identifying the picture of the Russian economy structural dynamics. The main conclusion is that the formation of a new model of economic growth in Russia is possible only through structural changes and appropriate structural policies that ensure the movement of resources between sectors, in particular, manufacturing, raw materials and transaction. In addition, based on panel data on the Russian economy, econometric models are constructed that show the relationship between the level of inequality, poverty, and gross domestic product, confirming the need for economic policies aimed not only at applying targeted assistance to the population in reducing poverty, but also reducing inequality as a measure that stimulates economic growth. Thus, the study solves the problem of measuring the structure of growth with the identification of the contribution of this structure to the growth rate, which provides long-term data on the possibility of maintaining economic dynamics at a particular rate.