ECONOMIC TURNOVER STABILITY AS A FACTOR OF MARKET PREDICTABILITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Subject. The subject of the article is the stability of economic turnover as a complex economic and legal category reflecting the capacity of the legal and economic systems to ensure the predictability, continuity, protection, and recoverability of commercial relations. The relevance of the study stems from the fact that disruption of the stability of economic turnover results in increased transaction costs, deterioration of payment discipline, declining creditor and investor confidence, shorter economic planning horizons, and a weakened capacity of the market to withstand the effects of crises. For Ukraine, this issue is of particular importance in the context of the full-scale armed aggression, the destruction of production, energy, and transport infrastructure, changes in logistics routes, the reorientation of foreign trade, the transformation of commercial legislation, and the country’s deepening integration into the internal market of the European Union. Methodology. The study is based on systemic, institutional, formal legal, comparative legal, and law-and-economics approaches. The systemic approach was applied to establish the interrelationship between legal certainty, the proper performance of commercial obligations, the effectiveness of judicial protection, the efficacy of insolvency proceedings, and market predictability. The institutional approach was used to determine the role of legal rules, judicial and enforcement mechanisms, and crisis-response procedures in shaping the expectations of market participants. The formal legal and comparative legal methods made it possible to analyse the provisions of Ukrainian legislation, the legal approaches of the European Union, and contemporary models of preventive restructuring and insolvency. Official macroeconomic, foreign trade, and business survey data from the National Bank of Ukraine, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and Eurostat were used to substantiate the economic relevance of the category under examination. Purpose. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the stability of economic turnover as an independent economic and legal category, to identify its essential characteristics, structural components, and economic functions, and to determine its place within the interrelationship between legal certainty, market predictability, and sustainable development. Results. The study substantiates the methodological inadequacy of a static understanding of stability as the immutability of legislation or the market environment. It is proposed that the stability of economic turnover be understood as the dynamic capacity of the economic and legal system to maintain, adapt, and restore commercial relations both under normal conditions and in the face of regulatory, financial, security-related, energy, and logistical disruptions. An original definition of this category is formulated on the basis of four interrelated characteristics: predictability, continuity, protection, and recoverability. On this basis, a structure of the stability of economic turnover is proposed, comprising regulatory, contractual and obligatory, jurisdictional and protective, and crisis-response and recovery components. The relationship between the stability of economic turnover and the stability of legislation is clarified. It is established that the immutability of the body of legislation does not guarantee the predictability of commercial relations where contracts are systematically breached, judicial practice is inconsistent, judgments are not enforced, and insolvency proceedings fail to ensure the proper resolution of debt relations. At the same time, consistent and well-substantiated legislative changes accompanied by appropriate transitional mechanisms may enhance the stability of economic turnover. Its assessment should therefore take into account not only regulatory stability but also the actual effectiveness of legal regulation. A functional model of “legal certainty – stability of economic turnover – market predictability – sustainable development” is proposed. Within this model, the stability of economic turnover constitutes an intermediate institutional link through which the quality of legislation, judicial protection, the performance of obligations, and insolvency proceedings affects transaction costs, the behavioural expectations of business entities, and credit and investment decisions. The predictive, transaction-reducing, trust-building (fiduciary), investment, anti-crisis (adaptive-recovery), resource-reallocation functions of the stability of economic turnover are identified. Insolvency proceedings are characterised not only as a mechanism for satisfying creditors’ claims but also as an instrument for structuring debt relations, preserving viable enterprises, terminating economically inefficient activities, and returning assets to productive economic use. Conclusions. It is substantiated that the stability of economic turnover is one of the institutional prerequisites for market predictability and sustainable development. It is not reducible to the immutability of legal rules; rather, it characterises the actual capacity of the economic and legal environment to ensure the proper performance of obligations, effective protection of rights, the preservation of confidence among market participants, and the restoration of disrupted commercial relations. For Ukraine, the practical significance of the proposed approach lies in the possibility of assessing reforms of commercial legislation, the judicial system, enforcement proceedings, and insolvency procedures according to their actual impact on the predictability, continuity, protection, and recoverability of economic turnover in the context of war, post-war recovery, and European integration. Practical significance. The proposed characteristics, structure, and functional model of the stability of economic turnover may be used to develop a system of indicators for assessing the quality of the commercial legal order, to evaluate draft regulatory legal acts, and to determine the priorities of Ukraine’s economic and legal policy.