SCALES OF SHADOW ECONOMY IN RUSSIAN REGIONS

In post-Soviet Russia there has been a significant increase in the level of shadow economic activity with its simultaneous qualitative transformation. The impact of the shadow economy testifies to the loss of society's control over the direction of socio-economic and political processes. Researchers regularly make attempts to assess the scale of its spread at the state level; studies of the shadow economy in the regional context are much less frequent. To study it, the regions were grouped according to the level of economic development. In our opinion, the most preferable method for determining the level of shadow economy is the MIMIC-model. To build it, factors were determined for each group of regions using the method of principal components, and indicators of causes were identified using the analysis of factor loadings. On the basis of the obtained structural equation for each of the groups of regions, the adjusted value of the volume of shadow economy in the regional context was calculated. The shadow economy of the Russian Federation in the regional context looks rather uneven. In the period from 2006 to 2022 its average level exceeded the threshold value. Only in a few regions the level of informal activity decreased. In most regions the situation is more sad — the level of shadow economy remains stably high, and in a number of regions shadow activity tends to increase.