This review examines the impact of the global financial cycle on small open economies and compares the effectiveness of various monetary and macroprudential policies in the presence of global financial cycle. First, we provide a classification of the channels through which the monetary policy of the world financial regulators (US Federal Reserve, ECB), which largely determines the global financial cycle, is transmitted to small open economies: the channel for interest rates differential, the channel for the activities of global financial institutions, and the channel for commodity prices. Second, by analyzing the arguments of supporters and critics of the monetary policy trilemma, we show how the literature comes to the conclusion that inflation targeting policy is still one of the most optimal solutions for achieving the goals of price and macroeconomic stability but fails to ensure financial stability. The latter requires active coordination with macroprudential policy measures. These conclusions are supported by the analysis of case studies of specific countries (Russia, New Zealand, Brazil, Turkey, etc.), which attempted to mitigate negative consequences of the 2007—2009 global financial crisis.

The work is devoted to the study of the influence of changes in the transparencyof monetary policy on the effect of exchange rate pass-through in consumer prices. Based on econometric modeling of cross-country panel data, it is shown that an increase in the transparency of communication between the central bank and the population leads to a decrease in the elasticity of domestic prices with respect to the exchange rate in countries that target inflation and adhere to other monetary policy regimes. The effect is observed for both developed and developing economies; it is stronger in the second case. The obtained result can be interpreted as an argument in favor of the advisability of the Bank of Russia transition from a verbal description of its future actions to the publication of a quantitative forecast of the interest rate trajectory.

Commonly used in monetary VARs identification schemes yield to a highfrequency approach as they tend to raise different empirical puzzles reported in the literature. However, financial markets in some open economies are not sufficiently liquid to provide minute bars data on interest rate financial instruments. This paper fills this gap employing a new series of high-frequency monetary policy surprises with USD/RUB currency futures and spot instruments. We find that a monetary tightening is contractionary without price puzzle and other paradoxes about financial variables. This result is robust for the period 2010—2019 apart from the crisis of 2014—2015 when the free floated ruble was devalued due to the sharp decline in oil prices. We also decompose surprises on monetary policy shocks — changes in the expected interest rate, and an information component — the information simultaneously conveyed by the central bank like an assessment of the economic outlook. We find that the former one significantly affects monetary policy surprises that does not confirm a hypothesis about substantial impact of non-monetary news on the external instrument.

We analyze the heterogeneous influence that monetary policy has on the growth rates of real personal income in 79 Russian regions over the period from 2Q2015 to 4Q2019, taking into account some of the channels of monetary policy transmission mechanism and spatial effects. The analysis was performed on the basis of panel data and a spatial autoregressive model. Besides that, we have calculated individual direct effects of changes of the interest rate for each region. Our results confirm the existence of a negative relationship between changes in the interest rate and growth rates of real personal income. This relationship is heterogeneous for different regions. Among the significant factors affecting the heterogeneity of the influence of monetary policy are the industrial structure and concentration of small businesses in regional economies. We have also found significant positive spatial effects of neighboring regions on each other. Our results generally coincide with those received in analyses of the effects of monetary policy in other countries.

The paper assesses the influence of science–business cooperation on the activity of firms, analyzes the factors of interaction of Russian companies with academic organizations and universities in the research sphere, identifies barriers to the development of cooperation between business and science. It has been established that companies whose source of innovation was external R&D were more likely to grow over the past 5 years and to create new products. However, a significant effect of the impact of cooperation with domestic research organizations was found only for the dynamics of exports. It is shown that cooperation with domestic science is more typical for high-tech industries and large Russian businesses. The factor inducing firms to outsource research is a significant level of competition. The high cost of external research services and their insufficient quality hinder the development of scientific and production cooperation. One can point to such a barrier as low interest of research organizations in the volume of orders that firms can offer. This is caused by weak institutional change in the Russian science, preservation of its orientation at the state and major players, which significantly limits the opportunities for institutional interaction of small innovative firms with science. It has been shown that the state quite effectively “pushes” companies to interact with research organizations and universities, but the results of such interaction are often unsatisfactory for firms.

InnoThe article examines the specifics of innovative activity of Russian drug manufacturers, which in the context of a COVID-19 pandemic become a matter of national security. The research is based on panel data: out of a total of 1,816 enterprises in the industry, a sample of 345 innovatively active enterprises is formed with a time series of data 20 years long. The sample is diversified by the scale of enterprise activity into 4 groups: micro enterprises, small, medium, and large enterprises. These types of enterprises are compared both in absolute terms — size of investments in intangible assets, age, and in relative ones — frequency of investments in innovations, coefficient of autonomy, profitability of sales and assets, share of intangible assets in revenue and assets. The analysis was supplemented by enterprises not included in the sample to identify the effectiveness of innovation in the industry. The result is the innovative profile of industrial enterprises in the context of the scale of their activities. The conclusion is drawn about the specifics of the domestic pharmaceutical industry innovation activity, which generally coincides with the established distribution of roles in the global pharmaceutical industry, when large enterprises are leaders in the innovations development and implementation. Russian large companies also tend to use micro enterprises to implement risky projects. The authors conclude that in Russia, the foundations have been formed for transition to a new model of pharmaceutical industry innovative development. This model is based on cooperation of small and large businesses.