Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast @volnc-esc-en
Статьи журнала - Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast
Все статьи: 1692

Статья научная
The study is part of a hybrid methodology that combines field and remote methods for collecting primary sociological data. The goal of the study is to verify and show the capabilities of expert online survey in studying the issues of reforming the power and management hierarchy in conjunction with the data from official sources, representative field survey, content analysis of the regional media and online studying of network communities in regions with different levels of socio-cultural modernization, which are used as a whole in the study under a Russian Science Foundation grant. The paper presents summarized results of the initial stage (in four out of twelve regions of the Russian Federation) of this study aimed to obtain representative data on the work of government and management authorities in the context of socio-cultural modernization in individual regions, to identify relations that affect the functionality of regional administration systems, which determine the nature and level of their development, and the ability of regional power and management vertical to effectively solve socio-economic problems...
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Civil society and the transit of power in 2024
Статья научная
The article deals with the issue of the transit of power in 2024 and the role of civil society in addressing key tasks that the head of state has to deal with in the period before the election to the State Duma of the Russian Federation (2021) and the presidential election (2024). We investigate historical aspects of the transit of power in Russia that show the broad and complex scale of its implications for social development. We provide forecasts and expert assessments of the current situation in the country as a factor in the possible success of the transit of power in 2024. On the basis of the data of the all-Russian and regional sociological studies implemented in the form of a monitoring we analyze the dynamics of public opinion on key issues related to public and personal needs that are actual and expected to be implemented. The analysis reveals that the most acute problems of concern to the population are long-term and unresolved. On the background of the launch (unsuccessful in many ways) of national projects 2018 and worrying forecasts about the prospects for the future of Russia, and given the fact that Russia’s economy has overcome the period of stagnation observed since 2014, this brings to the fore the issue concerning the effectiveness of public administration in the new political cycle in which (according to the Constitution of the Russian Federation) Vladimir Putin will not be able to take the post of head of state. In the “transit” period (the period remaining until the State Duma election of 2021 and the presidential election of 2024), the President has to deal with the tasks of a higher level. One of them is related to the implementation of the potential of civil society accumulated over the past 20 years, since civil society is an active entity representing the interests of the general population in dialogue with the authorities at all levels of government. The solution to this problem can guarantee a successful “transit” of the Russian society in a new historical period.
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Classification of non-political participation practices of urban youth: forms, motivation, barriers
Статья научная
The article explores civic (non-political) participation practices among young people, which are understood as voluntary, public, and altruistic individual or collective actions. They are viewed as a condition for allowing young people to exercise their right to the city and are aimed at transforming urban space. The role of citizens in modern urban centres is increasing; they are becoming not only users, but also co-authors. Local activities that transform the territory in which young people live lead to an increase in their self-esteem and confidence, the acquisition of soft skills, and the formation of norms of interpersonal interaction. This study's main aim is to identify types of youth civic participation in a large industrial city. Drawing on data from an online survey (quota sampling, n = 800) of young people in the large industrial city of Yekaterinburg (Russia) conducted at the end of 2020, we suggest a typology of civic participation practices. The types were identified through the experience of participation in activities aimed at exercising a right to the city, a willingness to collaborate with other people, the degree of the institutionalisation of civic practices, and motivation to participate or not participate in civic practices. The article argues for building a constructive dialogue with government authorities to meet the needs of young people in transforming urban space. Studying specific do-it-yourself urban design practices in different cities and territories to find the most successful models for potential replication may be a promising direction for further research.
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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
Статья научная
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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