Impending Recession and How to Fight It

Abstract

This article considers the problem of autonomous recession as a drop in output not directly associated with the world economic situation, but mainly due to domestic supply and/or demand shocks. To determine possible factors of autonomous recession, we have studied the stylized facts and other characteristics of such periods in countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2000–12, drawing analogies with the current Russian situation, from the standpoint of both causes of a potential recession and the response of the economic authorities, that is, a countercyclical economic policy. The latter considers global and Russian experience in determining the so-called output gap (the difference between potential and actual output), mainly using modeling approaches for Russia with “nonaccelerating inflation rate of production utilization factors.” Designs of an anticrisis policy are suggested with regard to autonomous recession, the utilization of productive potential, and the characteristic features of the Russian economy as mainly resource-based and thus unusually procyclical from the point of view of macroeconomic indicators.