Income Shocks and Coping Strategies of Russian Households

Abstract

본고의 연구목적은 비공식경제활동의 소득 충격에 대한 대응전략으로서의 역할을 검증 하는 데에 있다. 실증분석을 위하여 러시아 가구패널자료 (RLMS-HSE) 의 2002년-2015년 사이의 정보가 이용되었다. 장기간 축적된 RLMS-HSE의 풍부한 정보, 상대적으로 낮은 표본탈락(attrition)의 문제, 그리고 데이터의 용이한 접근성 등은 장기간에 걸친 불황 및 경제충격과 사람들의 대응행동을 분석하기에 적합한 강점이다.

소득충격과 다양한 형태의 비공식노동과의 관계(2장), 그리고 친척 또는 지인간 사전이전 및 가내생산과의 관계(3장) 및 각각의 소비평탄화 효과(4장) 등을 로짓모형, 멀티로짓모형, 그리고 이중차분 모형을 통하여 검정하였다. 특히 본고는 임금지불유예, 임금삭감, 강제적인 무급휴가 등에 의한 임금충격을 소득충격 변수로서 활용하였다. 뿐만 아니라, 2007년 이후 시행된 최저임금제도의 개혁을 이중차분 모형과 함께 활용하여 내생성의 문제점을 보완하고자 하였다.

결론적으로, 본고의 실증분석은 러시아의 비공식 경제가 경제충격에 취약한 계층이 선택하게 되는 소득충격 대응전략으로서의 부분적인 역할을 함과 동시에 경제환경과 제도의 높은 불확실성 하에서 전략적이고 자발적인 선택으로서의 역할이 혼재되어 있다고 평가할 수 있겠다.

Russia began its transition toward a market economy in the early 1990s. However, its transition has not been smooth as it experienced a severe transition recession and several economic crises in the 1990s-2010s. This led households to use various coping strategies in response to these negative economic conditions and high uncertainty. These coping strategies include not only formal but also informal economic activities. In this regard, Russia is an interesting case for understanding household informal economic activities as a coping strategy given a large income shock.

This thesis sets out to analyze the coping strategies of Russian households in a response to income shocks using the data from the Russian Monitoring Longitudinal Survey of the Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for the years 2002 to 2015. In more detail, it addresses the following three questions: 1) To what extent did business cycles affect informal economic activities? 2) Which coping strategies were utilized to respond to income shocks? 3) To what extent did such coping strategies contribute to consumption smoothing?

This study finds that informal economic activities in the form of working without contract rose during a boom but not a recession. By contrast, unincorporated self-employment is not associated with business cycles. This finding suggests that part of Russias informal economy is driven by the demand side rather than by the supply side. Also, this thesis examined the causality relationship between income shocks and coping strategies. The estimated results rejected the hypothesis (H0: Causal relation). Similarly, there are no significant consumption smoothing effects of such informal coping strategies.

The main contribution of this thesis is that we studied empirically on households shock adapting responses within informal institutions. Previous research has not addressed the cyclicality of informal labor supply with micro-based data sets. Moreover, research has not fully considered informal institutions as a package of coping strategies. Nor has it addressed the consumption smoothing abilities within a setting given economy-induced changes with policy-induced changes.

The second contribution of the thesis is methodological. Thanks to abundant information in RLMS-HSE, we analyzed heterogeneity of informal labor supply over the decades, as well as consumption smoothing abilities in Russia since 2000. In addition, we exploit the quasi-experimental variation in income caused by decentralization of minimum wage across the regions.

The third contribution of the thesis is that our research focus was on workers who grew up and educated in post-transition era faced institutional uncertainty, in which emerged between the demolishing of old institutions and the construction of new ones.

Old cohorts with obsolete human capital from a socialist economy but with few market economy experiences left the labor market in the 2000s. Then, younger cohorts replace the place who were also educated during the Soviet era but acquired more market-oriented experience since the start of the economic transition.

The results of the thesis show that the informal economy in the current Russian informal economy is interwind motivated and single logic is not enough to explain its rationale and motivations. Thus, in order to understand the informality accurately, both micro-based data and macroeconomic changes have to be considered at the same time. More rigorous analysis on underlying assumptions of research and assumed unobservable characteristics would be needed.