One of the biggest lies from Putin is that he has pulled out the Russian economy from ruins and given it a big push. It is not true because the evolution of real GDP per capita in Russia follows the same path since 1998, i.e. the push to the economy had been given by President Yeltsin. Figure 1 presents the measured real GDP per capita in Russia since the start of transition in 1991. We have also plotted our prediction as based on a physical model of transition from socialism to capitalism.
The years of Putin’s presidency are characterized by inertial economic growth, which is not different from the previous years. There is no chance that Putin could make any difference. On average, the rate of real economic growth in Russia was of 4.0% per year since 1998. According to our model, the rate should be around 5% per year for the level of GDP per capita in 1998-2007. This means that the Russian economy has been lagging behind its potential output.
Figure 1. Observed and predicted evolution of real GDP per capita in Russia.
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