ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals different technologies for forming conditions for arbitrage in the Russian economy by analysing various examples in the agro, food, oil, fish and building industries. Numerous examples demonstrate convincingly that these conditions are being formed as a result of purposeful human activity of the bureaucracy which, most of the time, is a major beneficiary of arbitrage. Defining arbitrage as the action that includes buying and selling on different markets where there is asymmetry of price, with the objective of taking benefit, usually implicitly assumes independence of market prices. Arbitrage conditions exist across the spectrum of time; that is, they can be realised for both long and relatively short periods of time. Long-term conditions usually rely on the legislative system, whereas short-term conditions depend mainly on solutions of territorial rulers. Frequently, a relationship with a ruler is a dominant factor because the law has less influence than a ruler's decree.
