01885cas a2200253 a 4500 AALejournalIMF008894 230101c9999 xx r poo 0 0eng d 5.00 USD 9781451862041 1018-5941 BD-DhAAL BD-DhAAL Kwon, Goohoon. Russia's Regions : Income Volatility, Labor Mobility and Fiscal Policy / Goohoon Kwon, Antonio Spilimbergo. Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2005. 1 online resource (19 pages) IMF Working Papers <strong>Off-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required <strong>On-Campus Access:</strong> No User ID or Password Required Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students Russia's regions are heavily exposed to regional income shocks because of an uneven distribution of natural resources and a Soviet legacy of heavily skewed regional specialization. Also, Russia has a limited mobility of labor and lacks fiscal instruments to deal with regional shocks. We assess how these features influence the magnitude and persistence of regional income shocks, through a panel vector autoregression, drawing on extensive and unique regional data covering last decade. We find that labor mobility associated with regional shocks is far lower than in the United States yet higher than in the EU-15, and that regional expenditures tend to expand in booms and contract in recessions. We discuss institutional factors behind these outcomes and policy implications. Mode of access: Internet Spilimbergo, Antonio. IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2005/185 Full text available on IMF http://elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2005/185/001.2005.issue-185-en.xml IMF e-Library