Evaluation of parameters of government institutions rule-making activity is a relatively new and promising approach to assessing the scale of government intervention in the economy. Indicators of the volume and rigidity of the regulatory framework are used for this purpose. The latter are formed using Big data and linguistic analysis methods with respect to a set of regulatory documents.
Database of official documents adopted in the period 1991–2018 (decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, orders and resolutions of the Government of the Russian Federation, orders of federal executive bodies, federal laws), was gathered which allowed to characterize the features and stages of development of the regulatory model in Russia, as well as to identify the factors of rule-making activity at the level of branches of the Russian economy.
The research results show that despite the stabilization of the rule-making activity dynamics after a period of active regulatory expansion (2004–2015), the level of regulatory framework rigidity in Russia remains high. The distribution of normative acts in the space of the activities of the OKVED classifier allowed using econometric methods to evaluate the theoretical model of regulatory activity at the sectoral level of the economy. Empirical estimates show that the public sector is regulated more intensively than the private sector. In addition, higher regulatory activity is observed in industries producing a greater amount of the added value. In turn, lower regulatory activity and lower regulatory rigidity characterize industries with a higher level of GVA per firm. Regulatory control and direct control of state property are interchangeable mechanisms for managing sectors of the Russian economy.