Population health of large cities: trends and risks

(M.: Master, 2011. – 400 p.)

Marina V. Klinova – Ph.D. in Ecomomics, Senior Researcher of the Institute of Economic and International Relations of the RAS.

The monograph by M.V. Klinova “The State and private capital: from theory to practice of interaction in the European countries”, which was launched in 201, is devoted to the research of the urgent problem of the state-and-private business and partnership in the countries of the European Union and Russia.

According to the logic of the narration the book will consist of two parts. The first part in a greater degree is devoted to concepts, and also to the documentary substantiation of cooperation between the state and private capital, including public services within the legal space of the EU. The second part is devoted to realization of practical interaction between the state and private capital (including state business) for the period from the last quarter of the 20th century to the beginnings of the 21st century.

The arrangement of the chapters from Unit One is caused by the system “thesis – antithesis – synthesis”. In the beginning two extreme points of view towards the mutual relations between the state and private capital are investigated: reduction of the state’s role to minimum and maximal nationalization. The views within the framework of which the symbiosis of the considered representations is planned, the turn of the economic idea to the synthesized approach in use of the state-and-private partnership (SPP) are also analyzed.

In the focus of the mentioned work is the foreshortening less researched by experts and nowadays rather urgent for the role of the state in the economy: its interaction with private capital mainly in the sectors of economy with the attributes of natural monopolies, starting from water, heat, gas, the electric power supply and finishing with the main pipelines, etc.

The separate chapter is devoted to the analysis of the legal provisioning of the SPP and regulation of the infrastructure development in the documents of the European Union, the organizations – social partners of EU (among which is the European center of enterprises with participation of the state in capital and enterprises of the general economic value), and also in the separate countries of EU. In the final part of the book the modern realities of cooperation between the state and private capital before, during and after crisis are submitted.

In the author’s opinion, at the present period the state renders the essential influence on the economy, in particular consistently developing infrastructure. Methods, accents, intensity and directions of the activity of private capital (the basic driving force of progress in production) vary. Infrastructure development on the basis of partnership between the state and private capital acquire special importance everywhere in the conditions of globalization, competition aggravation, change of the ratio of forces in the poly-centralized world economy.

Referring to the history of economics allows revealing the number of the key problems of the state in the market conditions, namely support, protection, encouragement of the production development with relying on private initiative and firmness of the property right. Interaction between private capital and the state is obviously possible and justified both in the spheres traditionally categorized as natural monopolies, and in production in the form of state-and-private business.

However, the author marks, that both the surplus and the lack of the state participation in the economy are bad.

The search of the inevitable pragmatic compromise between the state and business which necessity was revealed by economic recession, shows, that at the highest point of the crisis the state and the private sector do not cooperate actively. The consensus’ search, probably, as one of the variants of the Anglo-Saxon and continental models of partnership considered in the book is necessary.

As a whole the book represents fundamental work which will open to readers (students, postgraduate students, businessmen, everyone who addresses to the economic experience of the past and the present) less investigated data on dynamics, mechanisms of interaction between the state and private capital; will interest by the submitted comments, extrapolations.

R.Yu. Selimenkov,

Deputy Department Head, Research Associate ISEDT RAS