Approach to assessing the sustainability of regional economic development based on labor productivity

The article suggests an approach to assessing the quality and classification of types of regional economic development based on allocation of an intensive and extensive component of development as well as application of the index method. At that, indicators such as labor productivity index, capital intensity index, labor input index, employment index are used. Ranking methods, which are frequently used nowadays, have a number of essential shortcomings, which caused the necessity to develop an approach to assessing economic development based on specific quantifiable criteria. This approach allows us to objectify assessment of regional development quality from the position of specifying the substantive development factors based on well-verified statistical assessments, which makes the process of well-founded and goal-oriented multi-criteria management decisions making much easier. Application of this approach is demonstarted by the example of the Ural Federal District regions, for which the quality and the corresponding type of development have been determined.