POLITICS AND BANKING IN RUSSIA: THE RISE OF PUTIN

Koen Schoors and Laurent Weill

Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

Abstract: We investigate whether lending by the dominant Russian state bank, Sberbank, contributed to Vladimir Putin’s ascent to power during the presidential elections of March 2000. Our hypothesis is that Sberbank corporate loans were used as incentives for managers at private firms to mobilize employees to vote for Putin. In line with our proposed voter mobilization mechanism, we find that the growth of regional corporate Sberbank loans in the months before the presidential election is related to the regional increase in votes for Putin and to the regional increase in voter turnout between the Duma election of December 1999 and the presidential election of March 2000. The effect of Sberbank firm lending on Putin votes is most pronounced in regions where the governor is affiliated with the regime and in regions with extensive private employment. The effect is less apparent in regions with a large part of their population living in single-company towns, where voter intimidation is sufficient to get the required result. Additional robustness checks and placebo regressions confirm the main findings. Our results support the view that additional Sberbank corporate loans granted prior to the March 2000 presidential election facilitated Putin’s early electoral success.

Keywords: bank; credit policy; politics; Russia. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G21 P34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cis, nep-pol and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://wps-feb.ugent.be/Papers/wp_19_951.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Politics and banking in Russia: the rise of Putin (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rug:rugwps:19/951

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium from Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nathalie Verhaeghe ().