IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_12869.html

Russia’s Wartime Economy: Measuring Regional Inequalities from Outer Space

Author

Listed:
  • Irakli Barbakadze
  • Jan Fidrmuc
  • Martin Hulényi
  • Ketevani Kapanadze

Abstract

We study Russia's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a natural experiment to determine how sudden disruptions to international market access reshape sub-national economic inequalities. Using remotely-sensed nighttime lights as a proxy for economic activity, we estimate the economic effects of the war at the national and regional levels. We find that Russia experienced an overall economic slowdown after the start of the full-scale invasion. Regions in Western and North-Western Russia experienced significantly larger economic contractions, while Southern and Southeastern regions exhibit relative improvements in performance. These findings suggest that sanctions, a shift toward non-Western markets, and increased military production, have driven significant regional changes in Russia’s economy and urban structure.

Suggested Citation

  • Irakli Barbakadze & Jan Fidrmuc & Martin Hulényi & Ketevani Kapanadze, 2026. "Russia’s Wartime Economy: Measuring Regional Inequalities from Outer Space," CESifo Working Paper Series 12869, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12869
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12869.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • P25 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist and Transition Economies - - - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12869. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.