Regulation of financial behavior of the population of modern Russia: regulatory context formation and personal development

Making premature financial decisions can negatively affect individual households and society as a whole, so public authorities, using various management mechanisms, regulate the population’s financial behavior. The article attempts to understand how the state regulation of the population’s financial behavior presents interventions in order to “change the context” (in particular, the regulatory and procedural foundations of the financial system) and to “change cognition” (in our case - “human change”, in particular personal knowledge and attitudes). Similar research topics cover the legal basis of financial organizations, behavioral tools for managing the population’s financial behavior, the ways to improve their financial literacy, and so on. In contrast, the present study first reflects the views of alternative economic theories (rational choice theory, behavioral economics) on the possibility of regulating economic behavior, the techniques of behavioral “nudging” widely spread in foreign countries are given; second, a scheme for regulating the financial behavior of the Russian population is proposed and the main regulatory documents regulating the activities of financial organizations in the country are analyzed; third, the relation between the regulation lines of “change the context” and “human change” is estimated. It is shown that the impact on the financial behavior of the Russians is mainly devoted to the “change the context”, i.e. at building a bona fide institutional financial system. The impacts in the line of “human change” are secondary; they are implemented through improving financial literacy and introducing mass financial products. This regulation allows a bias towards the person’s “passivity”. The elimination of the identified imbalance will improve the effectiveness of management decisions regarding the citizens’ financial behavior. It is proposed to redirect interventions from the construction of an “ideal” regulatory context of the financial system to the development of a literate and financially active population, able to form the necessary financial environment for the economy and society by their behavior.