Stimulating final consumption within the reduction of regional inequality

With increasing regional inequality, the economy of the Russian Federation and its regions experiences structural constraints related to its imbalance. The result of this situation is the reduction of domestic consumer demand, which has recently been considered a factor of the economic growth. It actualizes the problem of finding, identifying, and justifying areas of final consumption which may stimulate the population’s demand for goods and services of domestic production and reduce structural imbalances in current economic conditions. In this regard, the purpose of the study is to identify and scientifically substantiate ways to stimulate final consumption that reduce regional imbalances. One of these ways is tourism, which has a high multiplicative effect. It has the minimum share of import in the structure of the formation of its products’ resources. The study’s scientific novelty is the estimation of the effect of the increase of the tourism industry’s output within the regional context. Its results allowed us to identify the problem of under-receiving effects from stimulating the consumption of tourism goods and services by regions. The high contribution of the Central Federal District, which accounts for the greatest effect from the growth of tourism output, indicates the need to overcome the existing spatial asymmetry in tourism development between certain regions of the country. General scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, as well as tools based on the methodology of inter-sectoral balance, were used as the methodological basis of the research. The information basis of the research included works of domestic and foreign scientists dealing with structural policy, information from state statistics institutions, data from the World Bank and the World Tourism Organization. Future research areas are related to the definition of methods for regulating final consumption for a deeper understanding of problems of economic restructuring.