The state can redistribute resources in the economy not only by directly intervening in financial intermediation and subsidizing enterprises, but also indirectly, through state regulation of investment activities, by authorizing violations by enterprises of financial discipline to the budget and counterparties. The resulting soft budget constraints exempt, to a certain extent, enterprises from the need to attract financing from the financial system. Instead, there is a redistribution of resources within the real sector, from profitable industries and enterprises to unprofitable ones, and a “virtual economy” is being formed - a system within which state support for investment activities practically loses economic sense.
Non-payments can be considered as one of the most important sources of financing enterprises, in any case, the share of non-payments in GDP can exceed several times the share of bank loans. Enterprises financed in this way, despite any form of state regulation of investment activity, are exempted from the need to transfer control powers to someone. As a result, control is internalized.
Against this background, state regulation of investment activity is deteriorating , the processes of seeking and appropriating rents, stealing assets, exporting capital, and increasingly merging business and power are actively developing. Moreover, the absence of an active structural policy on the part of the state, attempts to compensate for it through government intervention in the redistribution of resources, lead to a deepening of structural imbalances in the economy and an increase in its raw material orientation.
Such a specific financing structure and soft budget constraints determine the internalization of control. The reason for the stability of soft budget constraints, as well as government intervention in the redistribution of investment resources, lies in the political interaction of the state and the corporate sector. At the same time, it would not be entirely correct to reduce this process only to lobbying their interests with the leadership of industrial enterprises seeking to change the state regulation of investment activity and its vector.
An equally important place here is occupied by the political activity of ordinary employees of enterprises, which thus protect their human capital. To a certain extent, this situation falls under the definition of "institutional trap" introduced by V. M. Polterovich, where the institutional trap is understood as an ineffective norm or mode of behavior of economic agents that turn out to be stable, despite the existence of more effective alternative ways of behavior. The stability of ineffective norms is due to the high costs of the transition to another norm, or transformational costs, which can negate the gain in efficiency achieved as a result of the transition.
Indeed, in conditions of large-scale structural imbalances in the economy, in the absence of a developed banking system and an efficient stock market, state regulation of investment activity and its role in the redistribution of financial resources turned out to be most in the interests of most post-Soviet companies. Formed, largely as a result of their impact on the political process, the financing system and, as a result, the management of industrial firms, is quite stable today, since it suits both real sector enterprises and financial institutions and authorities.
Attempts to reform the management mechanisms of companies in isolation from structural adjustment and institutional reforms have led to the formation of an ineffective, but fairly stable system of financing and corporate governance. They formed the internalization of financing, which, in turn, leads to the internalization of control, i.e., the independence of corporate owners from external investors.
In order to change the current situation with corporate governance, an active structural policy, the removal of restrictions on the movement of human resources within national economies, a sound social policy, effective centralized control over the implementation of reforms and the implementation of legal acts, the fight against corruption and all-round development assistance are needed new firms.