Fiscal Federalism in Russia: Soft Budget Constraints of Regional Governments

The study has reviewed the experience of foreign countries in the sphere of implementation of respective measures designed to prevent the emergence of soft budget constraints imposed on subnational authorities in a situation of fiscal decentralization. Also, a number of theoretic simulation models have been built and analyzed that describe the interactions arising between the central government and regional authorities while specific variants of budget policy are being selected. Certain hypotheses concerning the existence of soft budget constraints in the regions of the Russian Federation are empirically tested.