Structural and technological changes in the Russian economy since 2014

The challenges of modern economic development make it particularly urgent to improve the quality of economic growth and the efficiency of the economy. Reshaping Russia’s external economic relations has set in motion far-reaching changes in core macroeconomic and intersectoral linkages. The study focuses on structural and technological shifts across industries, together with changes in sectoral labor productivity. Drawing on Rosstat data and updated input-output tables for 2011–2024 developed at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, we apply methods and models of mathematical analysis and input-output modeling to show that the structural and technological characteristics of the Russian economy have changed substantially since 2014. Restricted access to external markets posed a major challenge, but the severe restrictions imposed by Western countries ultimately enabled the Russian economy to display flexibility and shift much of the real sector toward the domestic market, both in terms of output and investment. The improvement in the quality of growth during this period was accompanied by faster dynamics of primary resource productivity and labor productivity in certain economic activities. At the same time, significant changes in the technological level of production in several key economic sectors responsible for security and technological sovereignty (such as pharmaceuticals, machinery, and computer equipment) resulted from rising imports rather than import substitution. An important finding is that the Russian economy remains highly dependent on imports of goods and equipment. Modeling economic growth based on updated structural and technological interactions in Russian industries could be a subject of further research.