Structural studies of the modern Russian economic school: basic approaches and prospects

The economy has seen an increase in the rate of structural changes over the past century. Therefore, the economists extensively apply their efforts to study various structural phenomena, and one of the integral results of such work can be considered the establishment and development of structural dynamics theory. The purpose of this study is to highlight and analyze the fundamental contribution of the modern Russian school of structural research, to reveal the content of the main provisions of structural dynamics theory, and to evaluate the prospects for studying and managing structural changes. The methodology consists of taxonomy and generalization methods, comparative and morphological analysis, comparison of alternatives, including an overview of scientific works on structural changes. The study results in identifying the contribution of the modern Russian school of structural research to the description, explanation, modeling, and evaluation of the structural dynamics of the economy, clarification of the advantages and disadvantages of the developed approaches, models, methods for evaluating structural changes. The paper describes application options for structural analysis in the context of various economic systems, general drawbacks of index and other methods aimed to evaluate shifts. The article outlines three groups of research areas covering the main stratum of scientific works devoted to 1) the study of structural changes on the basis of macro aggregates and macrostructural models arising from the approach of N.D. Kondratyev, J. Schumpeter, L.V. Kantorovich, and V.V. Leontyev; 2) measuring structural breaks; 3) theoretical and terminological clarifications and substantiation of the industry application of individual models and methods. Intra-group insurmountable restrictions naturally lead to the need for establishing and developing structural dynamics theory, which proves to be fruitful for this kind of studies, especially in terms of the stability of structural changes. The article proves that the management of structural changes must be examined at different levels of an economic organization, taking into account the recursiveness of not only the systems, but also the management itself with regard to the initial state of the economy, goals for changing the structure, dynamics of the system, control parameters, and coordination. In the context of stagnation, an emphasis on development priorities and stimulation of expanding areas can worsen the structural configuration of the economy, which will result in a decrease rather than an increase in the growth rate. The prospect boils down to differentiating management methods, evaluating the power of the tools used in terms of structure and macro goals, which structural dynamics theory can provide.