We study the tax-spend nexus for Russian regional budgets. Causal relationship running from taxing to spending is found, thus supporting the concept “tax and spend” suggested by M. Friedman. Next, elasticity of expenditure by revenue is estimated for a panel of 80 regional budgets basing on data for 2000—2017. Estimates are in the range of 0.72 to 0.78 (depending on the econometric technique), which exceeds elasticity for the federal budget more than twice. This evidences that fiscal policy at the sub-federal (as distinct from the federal) level has clear pro-cyclical nature. Besides, the largest sensitivity of expenditure to revenue shocks is found for the item “national economy”, implying marked adverse implications for economic growth. We suggest to mitigate this effect by modifying fiscal rules for sub-federal budgets. They are currently aimed primarily at enhancing fiscal discipline, with less emphasis on countercyclical policy, insulating economy from fiscal shocks.

Is it generally true that being an exporter for a firm is associated with a higher productivity? We study the relationship between firms’ export status and their technical efficiency in Russian manufacturing sector in 2004-2013 using the data from the Bureau van Dijk database “Ruslana”. To estimate the exporter status effect we apply two methods, both based on the stochastic frontier analysis. The first approach estimates the effect as the marginal effect of the exporter status on technical efficiency. The second approach is based on the propensity score matching of exporting firms with nonexporting firms. We obtain robust results which suggest that the relationship between the exporter status and technical efficiency is positive. In both cases the exporter status’ effect is up to 0.03 (3 p. p.).