The non-payments economy: 30 years later

The paper analyzes the reasons and consequences of the dominance of the non-payments economy in Russia in the 1990s. Arguing with a recent paper by A.B. Chubais “Non-payments in the Russian economy of the 1990s: An unforeseen institution” (Voprosy Ekonomiki, 2003, No. 7), the author puts forward his own arguments for the emergence, spread and contraction of the phenomenon of non-payments. According to his point of view the fundamental reason for developing the barter economy in Russia was the need for directors and managers of enterprises to obtain empirical information and knowledge about the new structure and possibilities of the Russian economy. The methodological miscalculations of the authors of the concept of market reforms of the 1990s, associated with excessive trust in neoclassical economic theory, in particular, in the neoclassical concept of the firm, have been discussed. A broader view of the activity and interaction of economic agents has been proposed. It takes into account the achievements of institutional, evolutionary, behavioral, and system economic theories. An analogy between the early 1990s and the early 2020s in terms of the formation of the data economy and, in the future, the knowledge economy has been drawn. On the basis of the conducted analysis general recommendations for economic theory, policy and practice have been formulated.