Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast @volnc-esc-en
Статьи журнала - Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast
Все статьи: 1659
Classification of region's municipalities by structure and level of incomes and consumer spending
Статья научная
The paper presents a classification of region's municipalities that differ according to two criteria - the structure and level of incomes, and the level of consumer spending. The author investigated the combination of income sources (wages, pensions and unemployment benefits) that form in the aggregate the amount of disposable money income of the people who live in the administrative-territorial units of Perm Krai. The author also analyzed the influence of people's incomes on retail trade turnover in the region's municipalities. The data were collected, grouped and analyzed; they show that the level of people's income in large and medium cities, which are industrial centers, exceeds considerably the values of these indicators registered in rural municipalities, single-industry settlements and depressed areas. The reason for this lies in low wages of working population, a large proportion of retirees and the unemployed in the rural areas, single-industry settlements and depressed areas...
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Статья научная
The article presents results of the research in the differentiation of Russian subjects by birth rate of fourth and subsequent children, depending on the region's socio-economic development level for the period of 2005-2017. The authors conduct cluster analysis based on Ward's method of time series of 3 groups of indicators, particularly demographic, economic and social, in the regional context. As a result, they identify 6 clusters, describing the situation of Russian subjects, depending on the values of the birth rate of fourth and subsequent children and indicators of socio-economic development of the region for 2005-2017. The study reveals that in the period under review there are two main trends: first, transition of RF subjects from Cluster 1, characterized by sufficiently high values of the birth rate of fourth and subsequent children and low indicators of socio-economic development, to the clusters with a lower value of the coefficient and higher indicators of socio-economic development; second, transition of RF subjects from the clusters with a low birth rate of fourth and subsequent children to the clusters characterized by the increased birth rate against the background of improved socio-economic development. In the current period, it is possible to distinguish the formation of two poles of large families - these are “the poor with many children” regions, in which a high birth rate of fourth and subsequent children is associated with low socio-economic development, and “the rich with many children” regions with high birth rates and a high level of socio-economic development. Between them there are other RF subjects, which are gradually moving away from the pole of “the poor with many children”, but have not approached the pole of “the rich with many children” yet. The novelty of the study lies in the application of the author's approach to the analysis of relationship between large families and socio-economic development of Russian regions in the temporal dimension.
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Cluster approach as the basis of the region's linen complex development
Статья научная
The article describes the direction of future development of flax complex in the Vologda region on the basis of inter-sectoral and interterritorial cooperation and the formation of regional industrial cluster. Implementation phases of a special pilot project and the expected economic results of its implementation are presented.
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Статья научная
In modern conditions, ensuring rapid economic development is a priority task for industrial policy, but its achievement is hampered by the sanctions imposed on Russia. Russian oil industry has become an object of special attention to the countries that initiated the sanctions. The goal of the paper is to substantiate a set of practical measures that promote cluster development through innovation as an opportunity to facilitate economic growth in the region under the sanctions. In the framework of the goal we achieve the following objectives: we substantiate the cluster approach as a theoretical framework for the innovation-driven development of the industrial complex; we explore the current state and the value of the petrochemical complex in the economy of the Samara Oblast; we justify the stages of formalization of the industrial cluster on the basis of innovation. Scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that it expands the existing system of knowledge about economic sanctions not only as a tool of political pressure, but also as a resource for priority development of regions...
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Статья научная
The paper solves the problem of clustering Russian Federation regions according to their socioeconomic development, taking into account the sectoral structure of the gross regional product. Classical machine learning methods are a tool for solving the clustering problem. The object of the study is the differentiation of regions according to various socio-economic indicators. The subject of the study is the practice of using machine learning methods for clustering objects. The initial database for solving the problem of clustering regions includes actual statistical data on socio-economic development of RF constituent entities and the sectoral structure of their gross regional product as of 2019. We identify clusters of regions according to their socio-economic development with the use of modern machine learning methods implemented in Python, a high-level programming language, with the connection of libraries for working with data: Pandas, Sklearn, SciPy, etc. The preprocessing of the initial data was carried out: digitization of data categories, transition to specific values, standardization of indicators. The initial data set for 2019 contains 5,525 records on 65 indicators of socio-economic development for 85 regions of the Russian Federation. It identifies 15 basic indicators of socio-economic development of a region, based on the principal component analysis. According to these indicators, five regional clusters were identified with the use of the k-means clustering: the first cluster is characterized by a high share of wholesale and retail trade, real estate transactions, professional, scientific and technological activities in the GRP structure; the second cluster specializes in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade, real estate transactions, agriculture and forestry; the third cluster can be described as a cluster with a mixed economy, which is characterized by averages for the main socio-economic indicators in the Russian Federation; regions of the fourth cluster show a high level of unemployment and a high share of public administration, military and social security; the fifth cluster specializes in mining.
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Статья научная
The paper proposes the shaping of the concept of co-production in services and specifically refers to the educational process, respectively the cooperation between the supplier and the beneficiary of educational services. A “teacher-student” partnership is considered because we want to capture the system made up of the educational services provider and the active subject of educational training. The “teacher-parent” partnership isn't the subject of our research because we believe it may be a separate subject of research that transcends our current interest. After defining and clarifying the concept of co-production, an analysis is applied to a number of 500 respondents in education by giving concretely a questionnaire such as to provide adequate information for our purposes. The importance of the research undertaken resides in the conceptualization of the co-production between the offerer and the beneficiary in light of the elements through which it is reflected and in establishing connections between the availability of the beneficiaries to coproduce and certain elements taken into consideration such as the belief there will be some future advantages...
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Collective actions and social capital: implication of concepts
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Collective actions are the basis of social interaction. Collective action is defined as the system of organized individuals, who are included in groups, which have a certain degree of organization. The pecularity of collective activities is the fact that almost all people are involved in them, in one form or another. One of the first sociologists, who started the study of collective activities, was M. Weber. It was him who designated a collective action as a social one. While studying consumer behavior, economists also paid attention to collective activities of people (E. Ostrom). The result was the emergence of the social action concept in Sociology and the theory of collective action in Economics. Later, the number of researchers and studied problems in the context of a collective action expanded. Economists and sociologists were joined by psychologists, political scientists, anthropologists, biologists, and others. The theory of collective action allows us to explain a wide range of social life phenomena. This concept is closely related to the theory of social capital, which emerged at the intersection of economic and social sciences. Social capital is a factor that determines the intensity, effectiveness, and mass scale of collective actions. However, social capital itself is formed under the influence of collective actions. In foreign science, the problems of collective action and social capital are considered interrelated. In domestic social science, it is yet to be achieved. The theory of social capital has the umbrella effect, which allows searching for opportunities of theoretical and methodological integration of social capital components and forms of collective actions. The purpose of this article is to show, on the basis of the overview of the main research areas of social capital and collective actions in scientific literature, the most promising points of their contact for studying social reality in Russia. It includes the research of subjects of collective actions, transformation of their goals, the enrichment of the repertoire due to the emergence of new practices and the usage of virtual space. The important aspect is the environment for the implementation of collective actions, which forms their target orientation. The implication of concepts of social capital and collective action should allow us to identify aspects of mutual influence between them.
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Collective capitalist property in the institutional structure of Russia in the 1930s-1980s
Статья научная
The article deals with a subject of the possibility of applying the institutional theory to the study of the economic structure of Soviet Russia and the use of its individual elements to solve the problems of improving the efficiency of public administration at the present development stage of this country. The purpose of the work is to consider the basic issues of the evolution of the country’s socio-economic development at the stage of bifurcation. The novelty of the research is that it shows the evolutionary trends of the property institute and the political and ideological mechanisms of their ensuring in the 1930s-1980s. The emphasis is put on identifying the stages of property relations transformation: from the formation of collective capitalist ownership in the period of 1930s-1950s to the trends to its individualization in the 1960s-1980s. The turn of the 1990s is considered as a period of fundamental change of the collective capitalist property institute. According to the authors, the formation of a proto-bourgeois class of co-owners, which provided capitalist tendencies in the society’s development, was of great importance in Soviet times. The article shows the ideological content of trends leading to the capitalist transformation of Russia, which consist in justifying the property rights concentration. The change in the social base of the ruling class formation, the inclusion of the representatives of the intellectuals’ class and the intelligentsia in its composition were quite important in this process. It is noted that privatization in the course of market transformations broke the existing property relations in the Soviet period and led to an increase in social inequality. The authors emphasize the urgent need to restructure modern state policy in terms of taking into account the mentality of the “Russian life” and economic traditions that developed during the Soviet period.
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Communicative concept of the social contract and formation of the course of economic development
Статья научная
The article presents the communicative concept of the social contract. This concept focuses not on reaching a compromise, but on bringing the parties closer together during the discussion of their positions. Mutual understanding regarding the desired future of the socio-economic system is a necessary basis for determining the course of economic development with a communicative understanding of the social contract. Such an interpretation of it takes into account that not only the image of the future is important, the process of its joint comprehension, the organizational aspect of this process is no less important. As evidenced by foreign practice, with standard procedures of electoral democracy, state policy is formed under the influence of business-oriented groups, and the influence of the preferences of an ordinary citizen is close to zero. Information technologies have not only dramatically expanded communication capabilities, but also led to the identification of the information elite. The article analyzes the discussion about the influence of this elite on social development, including the discussion of the theory of information autocracy. When mass media leads to increased polarization of society, it increases investment risks and causes a slowdown in economic growth. As foreign studies show, a new technological elite occupies a special position on topical issues of modern socio-economic development. The elite is interested not only in new technological and economic results, but also in social progress. The strong support of the high-tech elite for income redistribution and progressive taxation allows us to take a fresh look at the prospects for the convergence of the positions of social clusters regarding the course of economic development. The communicative concept of the social contract is a suitable basis for the synthesis of ideas of social clusterism and collaborative democracy.
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Comparative analysis of domestic approaches to compensation for damage caused to water bioresources
Статья научная
Issues related to renewable natural resources and compensation for damage to resources as a result of economic activities are in the focus of Russian and foreign scientists. The article presents domestic approaches to compensation for harm caused to water bioresources and their habitats. The purpose for the research is to conduct comparative analysis of two existing Russian approaches to compensation for harm caused to water bioresources: as a result of economic activities (construction of facilities, pipeline stringing., etc.) and illegal fishery of water biological resources (poaching). The authors conduct analysis of open data on water biological resources linkage, fishery yield and value characteristics of compensation through artificial reproduction of water bioresources as the main direction of natural resource recovery. The authors use data on the Arkhangelsk and Murmansk oblasts, Republic of Karelia, Komi Republic. They cover the issues of damage compensation from illegal extraction of water bioresources with use of the fixed charge approach...
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Comparative analysis of regional differences in healthcare, environment, and public health
Статья научная
The article compares Russia's regions on the basis of the current state of affairs in healthcare, environment and public health. The comparison was performed using econometric techniques, namely, cluster analysis. The authors used the statistics obtained from Rosstat's official publications as initial data. The first parameter - “public health” - uses indicators of life expectancy and the total morbidity rate due to all causes. The second parameter - “environment” - analyzes the indicators of emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere and discharge of contaminated water into waste water. The sphere of healthcare was analyzed with the help of four indicators such as the number of beds per 100,000 population, the number of hospitals, the number of doctors per 10,000 population and the capacity of hospitals. After the analysis, the authors created a scatter plot for each group of indicators, and compiled a table that shows the structural and qualitative developments in the regions during the 2000s...
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Статья научная
Since the beginning of the escalation of the Ukrainian situation, the Collective West has imposed an unprecedented number of sanctions against the Russian economy. Restrictions in international trade operations and, in some cases, their full termination have forced large domestic businesses to look for “friendly” markets and develop new logistics routes. And if at the end of the first half of 2022, the oil and gas industry has shown significant growth, some Russian corporations of metallurgy and coal industry were under a jeopardy. Despite favorable conditions in the first months of 2022, the financial results of the second quarter are expected to be much more modest. The fall in revenues of metallurgy and the coal industry from spring 2022 was influenced by higher transportation costs as a result of the turn to the East, insufficient capacity of the Baikal-Amur Mainline and Trans-Siberian Railway, sales of products at a large discount to Asian consumers, and lower export revenues due to the strengthening of the ruble. All these factors will have a negative impact on the volume of the taxable base and revenues of regional budgets. The article was written using methods of vertical and horizontal data analysis, methods of comparison and forecasting, and the method of expert evaluations. The information base of the study was the domestic and foreign literature on the development of metallurgical and coal industries; financial statements and operating results of the largest Russian corporations of ferrous metallurgy (PJSC Severstal), nonferrous metallurgy (PJSC Nornickel) and coal industry (JSC CC Kuzbassrazrezugol); data of the Federal Tax Service in the Vologda and Kemerovo Oblasts, and Krasnoyarsk Krai; information of Forbes.ru; data of information and news portals.
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Comparative assessment methodology of the region`s scientific and technical potential
Статья научная
The article is devoted to some methodological questions on the research of the region’s scientific and technical potential. It contains the general characteristic of existing domestic techniques used to evaluate the potential of the science and technology sphere and foreign techniques adapted to the Russian conditions. By the results of their analysis the authors suggest their own comparative evaluation technique that consists in calculation of the integral index- “the region scientific and technical potential index” reflecting both the efficiency and the scale of potential use in the region’s territory.
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Статья научная
The article considers the methodological approaches to the quantitative and qualitative assessment of the region’s labour potential. The comparative analysis of labour potential dynamics of the regions of the Northwestern Federal District of Russia for 2002-2010, the Komi Republic by the level of labour potential development among the district’s regions has been carried out. The main reasons for the favourable dynamics of labour potential development index are revealed.
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Comparative evaluation of the economic development of underdeveloped areas in the Republic of Komi
Статья научная
The development of northern territories is always one of the priorities of state policy in Russia. The northern regions, on the one hand, are rich in mineral resources, forest and water resources; on the other hand, today they are the areas with stopped productions and redeveloping cities, rapidly losing their population and infrastructure. The development of new northern territories is extremely slow; the most part of their mineral potential is not ready for industrial development and requires further geological exploration and economic evaluation. The article deals with the developmental problems of the northern regions in the case of some territories of the Republic of Komi.
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Competition of Russian economic journals in the world market
Статья научная
The paper considers the next stage of formation of the Russian market of economic journals, which is characterized by its clear division into two segments - external and internal. The external segment contains publications included in the international databases Scopus and Web of Science (WoS), the internal segment covers publications that are not included in these databases. To reflect the changes that have occurred in the market, we upgrade the methodology for compiling the Rating of Russia’s Leading Economic Journals (RLEJ). The innovations affect the subsystem of expert assessment of publications included in the external segment, taking into account the differentiation of Scopus and WoS databases on quartiles, as well as the subsystem of market representation, taking into account the availability of Russian and English versions of journals. We provide the results of the fifth wave of RLEJ rating in the form of a Diamond List (top 13 journals) and a List of Journals of the Second Tier, consisting of 12 titles. We analyze the reshuffling of journals in comparison with previous years; we show that Russia already has 19 economic publications with international certification, of which eight publications have double certification (both Scopus and WoS). We consider several stylized examples of success and failure of journals; this allows us to determine the outlines of a general model for development of publications of the international level. In particular, we review the work of the heads of journals “at the top” - as drivers of their development through establishing external relations and finding financial resources, and their work “at the bottom” - as organizers of local scientific communities and exclusive intermediaries between authors and professional translators. Certain changes are pointed out in the employment relationship with highly qualified translators; now they are characterized by greater flexibility compared to the previous period. We also consider medium- and long-term implications of the emergence of two market segments of Russian economic journals.
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Competition, collaboration, and life satisfaction. Part 1. The seven of European leaders
Статья научная
The first part of this paper demonstrates that a group of seven European countries is significantly ahead of other Western states, including the United States, in the development of economic and political institutions. The Seven are Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. They rank first in the life satisfaction index (happiness index) and are leaders in the integral index of quality of life, civic culture, and institutional effectiveness which is formed by aggregating ten most important indicators. These include healthy life expectancy at birth, the corruption perception index, the democracy index, the human development index, the Gini index and a number of others. When this index is used to cluster the set of developed countries, the Seven appears to be the leading cluster. This result suggests that the achievement of high values of the proposed index contributes to the country’s advancement to the leading positions in life satisfaction. An analysis of the dynamics of institutional indicators showed that the U.S. lagging behind the Seven has been increasing over time. In recent years, the U.S. has been among the flawed democracies, the levels of generalized trust of U.S. citizens as well as trust in political institutions and in the government are decreasing, the U.S. advantages in terms of global competitiveness and per capita GDP are diminishing. The second part of the paper will consider what qualitative features of socio-economic and political mechanisms provide leadership, and how our findings can be used to develop catch-up strategies.
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Статья научная
The first part of the paper showed that the group of seven European countries leading in the life satisfaction index (happiness index) significantly outperformed other Western nations, including the United States, in the development of economic and political institutions. The Seven includes Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The second part examines what qualitative features of socio-economic and political mechanisms provide leadership. It is noted that attempts to explain this phenomenon by the low size of population and its homogeneity, as well as by the small area of these countries, are inadequate. The notion of collaborative advantages is introduced, understood as relatively more developed mechanisms of collaboration in the economic, social and political spheres. Based on three different classifications of types of capitalism and on an analysis of the history of countries of the Seven we show that they have reached the leading positions due to collaborative advantages. These countries are coordinated market economies, their economic systems are characterized as stakeholder capitalism, and their political systems are consensus democracies. The Seven of European Leaders carry out reforms aimed at improving collaboration mechanisms and, as a consequence, are less affected by the crisis of competitive institutions observed in Western societies. The presented results support the hypothesis that the strengthening of the role of collaboration mechanisms while reducing the importance of competitive mechanisms contributes to higher life satisfaction. The experience of the Seven is used by other developed European countries as well. The question of how our findings can be used in choosing a catching-up strategy is discussed.
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Complex assessment of housing and communal sector in the region's municipalities
Статья научная
At present, the functioning of housing and communal sector in most regions of the country is characterized by mounting crisis. The key problems in this sphere include poor quality of provided services, high depreciation of fixed assets, large non-productive resource losses, etc. These are the issues that the authorities should address to at all levels. At the same time it should be noted that municipal entities may considerably differ in the level of housing improvement, state of engineering infrastructure, and the possibilities of introducing market mechanisms of economic management. Therefore, the state policy in the housing and communal sector should be based on the use of economic instruments and incentives, taking the fullest account of the current state, sectorial and regional peculiarities. The article analyses the state of housing and utilities infrastructure in the Vologda Oblast municipalities on the basis of the integral estimation methodology; it distinguishes the territories with similar characteristics and problems concerning the functioning of this sphere, presents group characteristics. The key directions and instruments of state policy, the implementation of which will make it possible to use limited financial resources more efficiently, to optimize the territorial-production structure and to enhance the overall functioning efficiency of housing and communal services in different types of the region’s municipalities, are offered.
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