Impact of the coronavirus crisis on the dynamics of consumer prices in Russian regions

The coronavirus infection, which has rapidly spread around theworld and started determining global trends, has transformed the life of modern society. Over the past months, in the acute phase of restrictive measures, there have been both explosive growth in demand (digital goods) and negative trends connected with bankruptcies and cuts of salaries. All these fluctuations in supply and demand had an active impact on prices of various segments of the consumer market. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the dynamics of prices in the consumer market of Russian regions and assess possible trends in the post-crisis period, taking into account regional characteristics. In order to do this, the authors assess the main trends in the market of Russian regions at the beginningofthecrisis; determine the price dynamicsin the period 2019-2020 for separate market segments; specifythe nature ofcertain factors associated with the impact of the crisis on different types ofmarkets; identifypromising trends in price dynamics. As a result of the research for five groups of regions with different characteristics of socio-economic conditions and the level ofmarket development the following conclusions were made: 1) a slowdown in the growth ofprices for services for the vast majority of regions was revealed; 2) for the Depression cluster, intensive growth in prices for services is caused by weak market development, high costs and concentration on the segment of necessary services (low elasticity in price and income); 3) with similar price dynamics in the non-food segment of Above-average and Below-average clusters, various reasons are specified. In the first case, there is a delayed demand due to rising prices, in the second there is hidden inflation, when people do not have moneyfor goods. For a number of regions, there is a trend towards the emergence of new agents in the markets, due to rising prices (Depression for non-food products, Above-average and Below-average for food products).