Banks’ responses to monetary policy, money market rate forecasting, and impact on financial behaviour: New issue of Russian Journal of Money and Finance
The second issue of the scholarly quarterly Russian Journal of Money and Finance of 2025 has been published. The contributing authors study the impact of competition in the banking sector on the efficiency of monetary policy, propose models for forecasting a macroregion’s economic indicators and the money market rate, and discuss how behavioural economics can help people make informed financial decisions.
The banking sector is an important link in the chain of economic relations through which monetary policy influences inflation. This applies primarily to banks with significant market power. Usually, the value of bank assets is considered as the indicator of this power. Stepan Novikov (New Economic School; Bank of Russia) assesses the market power of Russian banks and calculates the value of their credit and deposit markups. The author is the first Russian researcher who has used these data to study banks’ responses to monetary policy measures.
Accurate forecasting of the money market rate helps investors manage risks associated with asset value changes. Dmitry Fedorov and his co-authors from Lomonosov Moscow State University describe the method for forecasting the RUONIA money market rate (key rate proxy). The method they propose is more accurate for long horizons of at least one year than forecasts based on market expectations.
The effect of the Bank of Russia’s monetary policy on the economies of Russian regions may vary depending on their specific features. Therefore, to forecast this effect accurately, models that reflect regional peculiarities should be used. Sophia Panteeva and her colleagues from the Bank of Russia Southern Main Branch propose a model of the economy of the Southern macroregion (which includes the Southern and the North Caucasian Federal Districts), which takes into account the macroregion’s sectors of specialisation (agriculture and tourism), the specific features of its labour market, and a significant degree of state participation in its economy.
People often make uninformed financial decisions, due to a lack of knowledge and cognitive biases, such as limited attention or a propensity to choose fleeting benefits. Vladimir Ivanov and Elena Nikishina (Lomonosov Moscow State University) analyse the international experience in promoting financially literate decisions by using behavioural economics.
The new issue of the Russian Journal of Money and Finance (No. 2, 2025) is available on its website.