The politics of bank failures in Russia

Russia has witnessed a high number of bank failures over the last two decades. Using monthly data for 2002-2020, spanning four election cycles, we test the hypothesis that bank failures are less likely before presidential elections. We find that bank failures are less likely to occur in the twelve months leading up to an election. However, we do not observe election cycles in bank failures are more pronounced for banks associated with greater political costs. Overall, our results provide mixed evidence that political cycles matter for the occurrence of bank failures in Russia.