Imbalances in the spatial development of Russia and its economic regions: choosing an accurate and adequate assessment method and levelling-off ways

One of the factors determining the structure of the expenditure part of Russia’s federal budget is represented by considerable imbalances in the spatial development of the country. The impact of this factor consists in the annual need to allocate funds to non-self-sufficient regions in the form of subsidies, which can be directed, for example, to the development of business in prosperous entities. The aim of the research is to carry out an accurate and adequate quantitative assessment of the degree of such an imbalance over a long retrospective period of time. Practical significance of the assessment is due to the fact that it will allow us to see which decisions of the authorities aggravated the problem under consideration, and therefore to develop recommendations for levelling off these imbalances. When choosing a method to achieve the goal, we decided to use the Herfindahl - Hirschman index that contains a modification proposed by Professor S.G. Svetunkov, which eliminates its disadvantage consisting in the dependence of the final value on the number of units included in the set under consideration. The use of this indicator has become the main element of the scientific novelty of the study. Having assessed the degree of heterogeneity of the Russian economic space on the basis of information retrieved from the official website of the Federal State Statistics Service, we use regression analysis to derive an equation describing its impact on the structure of the expenditure part of the federal budget. According to the viewpoint that we share, the key tool consists in smoothing out the imbalances within the economic regions that form the country. Their assessment is carried out in a similar way and is also an element of the scientific novelty of the study. Guided by the results obtained, we identify regions where the elimination of vulnerabilities can reduce the heterogeneity of the economic space of the respective economic regions and Russia as a whole. The indicator tested in the study can be used in the future, for example, to assess the degree of uneven distribution of various resources (material, financial, etc.) on the territory of Russia.