Impact of the Financial Literacy Index on the Macroeconomic Indicators of the Regional Development in the Russian Federation

The following research is dedicated to the development of a panel spatial regression model for assessing the impact of the financial literacy index of the population of the Russian Federation regions on the macroeconomic indicators of regional development. The research was conducted based on the data of 225 observations for 2018-2020 years gathered by National Agency for Financial Research, Federal State Statistics Service and Central Bank of Russian Federation and it attempts to prove that financial literacy has a positive effect on the Gross Regional Product per capita; average per capita income and a negative effect on regional poverty level, unemployment level; Gini coefficient and overdue mortgage debt. At the same time, it is assumed that the relationship between financial literacy and the indicators mentioned above has a positive spatial character and neighboring regions can positively influence the target region. As a result, on the one side, the following research allowed to theoretically substantiate the possibility of a connection between financial literacy and the level of regional development, based on the basic prerequisites of economic theory, which formed the author's conceptual model. On the other side, by systematizing the relevant literature, it was possible to theoretically find evidence of a connection between the level of financial literacy of the population of the regions and macroeconomic indicators of regional development based on the analysis of relevant academic literature on the research topic. As a result, it was possible to prove that the level of financial literacy has a direct and positive effect on the regional level of per capita income and regional GRP, and at the same time, the level of financial literacy has a negative effect on poverty level, unemployment level, outstanding loans level and the regional Ginny coefficient at the 5% significance level. The results obtained in this study allow to justify the necessity of increasing investments in human capital within the framework of educational initiatives aimed at increase the level of financial literacy of the population of Russian Federation. Keywords: financial literacy, financial literacy index, macroeconomic indicators, regional analysis, spatial econometrics.