Central Bank Responsibility Area taking Russian Example: Exchange Rate as the Financial Stability Indicator

Abstract

The paper raises two main questions: the definition of a Central Bank’s responsibility and the need of the exchange rate regulation for the countries with developing, emerging and post-transformed national economies. We also investigate this issue for Russian practice within the period of 1990s till nowadays. The paper provides an overview of the Central bank history, highlighting the stages of its evolution and the corresponding changes in the goal-setting for its activities and tasks. The goals and policy of the Bank of Russia are considered and evaluated in the context of modern international practice and efficiency of achieving the necessary level of financial stability and national economy development, preserving and strengthening economic sovereignty. Generally we use the Bank for international settlements (BIS) survey data processing, the comparative cross-country analysis of BIS statistics and econometric analysis of the data provided by Bank of Russia including exchange rate and investments (FDI, portfolio and other). We alsoanalyzed the main directions of the unified state monetary policy in the Russian Federation and the consequences of its implementation. The authors concluded that the countries of the representative group are more vulnerable to the negative impact of external factors on their national economy under the conditions of free-float exchange rates. The policy of the Russian Central Bank focused mainly on inflation targeting with the freely floating exchange rate of the ruble, is recognized as ineffective for solving internal problems of the national economy and confronting external threats and challenges, including current sanctions regime against Russia.