The paper provides an empirical analysis of fiscal incentives for Russian regional governments to foster economic growth and development. It points out several serious problems with previous empirical studies of fiscal incentives into Russian federalism, develops a new theoretical framework for the analysis of revenue-sharing policy between central and regional governments, paying particular attention to the case of non-benevolent authorities, and provides new estimates of incentive effects using an improved econometric methodology and a newly-collected dataset. Contrary to existing studies, incentives for regional governments are estimated to be present, but these incentive effects are considerably weaker in the short run than in the long run.