Abstract: the shadow economy in Russia is a leading environment of problems that destroy the state system and pose a serious threat to the economic security of the country. The purpose of this work is to identify the determinants of the shadow economy in the Russian Federation and to assess their impact on the volume of the shadow economy in 2005-2018. To analyze the existing problem, the main socio – economic determinants of the shadow economy were identified. To compare the results of the study of the influence of factors on the level of the shadow economy, their multivariate analysis was carried out. One of the obstacles to the effective application of this method is the presence of multicollinearity. In the study, the level of the shadow economy of the Russian Federation was considered as a dependent variable in the regression equations, and indicators characterizing the level of economic development of the country, innovation activity, the level of development of trade and entrepreneurship, the labor market were used as regressions. Multivariate analysis allowed to identify specific determinants that are statistically significant, and to determine their impact on the shadow economy. Of the large number of determinants analyzed in the paper, changes in the foreign trade balance, wholesale trade turnover and the dynamics of the average annual number of employees have a significant impact on the shadow economy.
Keywords: shadow economy, economic security, determinants of the shadow economy, management, government regulation