Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast @volnc-esc-en
Статьи журнала - Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast
Все статьи: 1692
Revisiting the type of economic system in the USSR
Статья научная
The article characterizes the type of economic system of the Soviet Union. In the authors' view, modern historiography has reached the impasse trying to address the issue. The overwhelming majority of researchers recognize that the USSR economic system was socialist, with all the attendant “positive” and “negative” aspects. The article proposes to characterize the type of economic system of the Soviet period through the analysis of correlation of important production factors such as labor and capital. This analysis is based on data of the USSR input-output balances of the national economy in the 1970-1980s. This source is introduced into scientific parlance for the first time; previously, it belonged to the category of “confidential”. In order to address the issue of the USSR type of economic system, the authors refer to the content of the tables containing data on common indicators of national economy during 1980-1986, the proportion of direct and materialized labor in total labor costs for 1975-1985, and the ratio of the number of the Soviet workers involved in mechanized and manual labor for 1975-1985...
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Rising in labour potential: the role of wages
Статья научная
The article deals with the identification of empirical interrelations between wages and rising in realization of labour potential. Theoretical and methodological research base includes copyright developments in the field of sociological evaluation of the implementation of labor potential. The study revealed a motivational function of wages. The author substantiated the role of wages in increasing the implementation of labour potential of the population in our time. It is shown that the current practice of pay and its institutional features are such that wages are not an effective tool for enhancing the implementation of the population’s employment potential. The results will be helpful to employees of regional authorities, managers of enterprises and organizations.
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Rising necessities: controversial transformation
Статья научная
The phenomenon of rising necessities is studied in the mechanism of the dialectical development of production and consumption and is represented as a set of interrelated aspects. This is an increase in the number of needs and consumption; distribution of needs in the broader circle of consumers; changed quality of needs; complication of the consumption method; changed forms of consumption; development of intellectual and social needs. The article shows that the process of rising necessities includes the complication of the consumption method, which leads to the formation of needs in services, and then to the emergence of social forms of consumption and services. It reveals the features and effects of this process: broad development of non-vital needs, emergence of quality and quantity hyper-consumption, demonstrative consumption and pursuit of brands; existence of antisocial needs that turns the rise in needs in its opposite; prevalence of consumer demand over income that results in “life on credit” of individuals and entire countries; unrestrained growth of needs, consumption and production respectively that give rise to unprecedented environmental pollution; hedonistic orientation of consumption, violation of dialectical connection of needs-abilities, crisis of culture and morality; formation of poly-needs that combine several components (material and non-material); accelerated development of needs in communication, entertainment and games...
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Risk assessment of urban sectors to climate change in Istanbul
Статья научная
The aim of the present study is to investigate the risk of climate change on Istanbul. Istanbul is the largest city, in terms of both population and economic activity capacity, in Turkey meaning that any climate-related risk would be destructive not only for the city but also for the country. The urban system has been identified based on urban sectors that are the issues of activities, management areas, ecological systems, resources and species and critical for economic viability and public health of the city, also likely to be affected by climate-related disasters. 11 urban sectors and 25 sub-sectors, which are also presented as planning areas, have been determined considering the development strategies of Istanbul as water resources, health, energy, agriculture, transportation, development and land use, public safety, infrastructure, biodiversity and ecology, culture and materials. ICLEI’s handbook titled “Preparing for Climate Change: A Guidebook for Local, Regional and State Governments” guided the risk assessment of these planning areas and sectors. The data has been obtained via in-depth interviews with city stakeholders and the sectors have been ranked considering the risk factors of each. The results of this study reveal the urban sectors that are under the greatest and lowest risk due to the impacts of climate change. Highlighting the climate change risk on vital sectors of Istanbul is essential for decision makers to develop further strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change and adapt the upcoming impacts.
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Risks of poverty in the modern Russian conditions
Статья научная
Poverty acts as an indicator of insufficiency and deficit of economic resources of the population; its boundaries serve as a demarcation line between people’s adaptation to social and economic changes and their maladjustment. The construction of a socio-demographic portrait of the poor, reflecting its recent dynamics and the current state helps identify the key risks of poverty and their stability in the modern Russian conditions. It is difficult for certain social categories to adapt. The specificity of socio-economic differentiation of the population in the modern Russian society is connected with the persistence of the stratification profile defined by the unequal distribution of money income among the population groups during the period of reforms. Raised standards of living of most population in the 2000s led to the drastic reduction in absolute poverty, defined by the boundaries of income below the subsistence minimum. However, nowadays, according to the objective indicators of the income amount, the tenth part of the Russians is considered as the poor...
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Road traffic accident rate as an indicator of the quality of life
Статья научная
The paper considers the issues devoted to assessing the connection between the quality of life and road traffic accident rate in different countries. The hypothesis put forward in the paper is based on the idea that the organization and functioning of the state road traffic safety management system and the outcome characteristics of road traffic accident rate in the road complex are closely related and are derived from the level of development of non-governmental institutions in a particular country. In order to determine how true this hypothesis is, the author carried out statistical studies of the relations between the estimates of the Quality of Life presented for 60 countries in the US News & World Report and the Human Risk indicators estimated for these countries. This indicator proposed by R. Smeed in 1949 for assessing the state of affairs in the field of road safety allows us to evaluate adequately the position of countries in the world ranking of road traffic accident rate...
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Статья научная
For more than a decade, the Russian state has been actively engaged in issues of preservation of people, but the positive effects of this work quickly disappeared (2014-2016), and the trend again changed to a negative one. The First (2006-2012) and the Second (2013-2020) Federal Target Programs on Road Safety were aimed at reducing the number of deaths in road traffic accidents, and made a positive contribution to the field of preservation of people. For instance, in 2006-2019, the annual number of deaths in road traffic accidents decreased from 32,724 to 16,981 people per year, or almost twice. Nevertheless, there are still many problems in ensuring road safety. One of them is the complexity of the system processes of road safety management in such a large country as the Russian Federation. Russia consists of 85 heterogeneously developed economically and socially entities on the territory of which representatives of 190 peoples live. The article analyses a wide range of issues related to the assessment of the impact of the sociocenosis features on one of the most important characteristics of road traffic accident rate - the severity. The purpose of the research is to study the influence of the characteristics of representative socio-economic factors on road traffic accident severity in Russian regions, and to develop the most effective differentiated approach to the financing of regional road safety programs on this basis. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the model confirmation of the previously put forward ideas about the positive impact of the basic socio-economic institutions that shape road users’ transport behavior on its safety. The authors consider these ideas in relation to Russia as a whole and to the relationship of regional road traffic accident rate with the economic and demographic characteristics of Russians’ life. The paper presents the rank patterns of influence on road traffic accident severity of such characteristics of regional sociocenosis as the population’s median age, the share of population with income below the minimum wage, and the average monthly income. We show the conceptual considerations for improving road safety in the Russian Federation in the spatiotemporal continuum.
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Статья научная
Financial capacities of the banking sector become an important strategic resource during the deficit of financial resources for the implementation of administrative multi-level spatial strategies and solution of important issues related to the territorial systems' socio-economic development. The purpose ofthestudyistojustifythekeyroleoftheeconomy'sbankingsectorinthesolutionoftheissueconcerningthe increase of the RF entities' fiscal capacity and to assess a volume of credit institutions' necessary financial resources. To achieve this goal, the following objectives were set: to study fiscal capacity and structure of the regional systems' government debt and the banking sector's contribution to its formation, to construct spatial regression models showing the dependence of the regions' socio-economic development level and their fiscal capacity on financial resources attracted by the banking sector, to define the volume of credit institutions' financial resources, attraction of which will solve the problem of the RF entities' budget deficit. We use the methods of statistical and regression analysis in this work. As a result, it was revealed that the banking sector's investments in government and municipal debt securities and lending of the RF entities contribute to the increase of fiscal capacity, form financial foundation for the implementation of socio-economic development strategies. Attraction of investments in enterprises' shares and securities, loans to financial and non-financial business and households lead to an increase of the territories' gross regional product. The results of this study may be useful for the government authorities of the RF entities while implementing the developed spatial socio-economic development strategies.
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Role of small business in providing employment in the Russian north
Статья научная
The article is devoted to the study of the level and dynamics of small business in the Russian North in current conditions on the basis of official statistics and the author's sociological survey. The reasons of the functioning and development of small business in market conditions are revealed. Regions of the Far North and territories equated to such are studied. The object of the research is small business in the northern Russian regions. The subject of the research is the study of the features of business development in the northern Russian regions. The purpose of this work is the study of processes taking place in the sphere of employment in the small business sector and its development in the northern regions of Russia. The information basis of this paper consists of domestic and foreign economists' works, materials of periodicals, and Internet resources on this topic. The results of the study show that employment in small businesses in the northern Russian regions, which are characterized by the dominance of extractive industries in the economy, does not have a strong impact on overall employment which is caused by this sector's current insufficient advancement. There is a narrowing of the small business sector on studied territories. With a case study of one northern region (the Komi Republic), we showed a contribution of small business into the provision of employment. The impact of small business on primary socio-economic indicators of the region is revealed. The assessment was conducted, and a low level of residents' business activity was noted: northerners do not seek to open a business due to a low level of expectations associated with the improvement of the economic situation and understanding of spatial development problems on the territory of residence. The main reasons of northerners' low business activity are the lack of entrepreneurial skills, the lack of start-up capital and difficulties with its attraction. The key directions of the increase of employment in the small business sphere of the northern regions are highlighted.
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Rural Development in the Context of Spatial Compression of a Northern Region
Статья научная
Ensuring balanced spatial development and reducing inter- and intra-regional imbalances are strategically important issues for Russia. However, finding a solution to these issues is complicated by the growing concentration of human, industrial, and scientific potential in large cities, major cities, and metropolises, depopulation and economic desertification of rural areas, that is, disintegration and compression of the country’s economic space. This is especially acute in the northern regions of Russia. The aim of the article is to study the problems and determine the prospects for development of rural areas of the northern region in the context of spatial compression on the example of the European North of Russia. We point out that the social, economic, and infrastructural issues observed in rural areas have remained unresolved since the 1990s. Rural population decline caused by the destruction of the socioeconomic potential of these territories is a key factor in the compression of the space of the northern region, degradation of the village and loss of its human capital. The reason lies not only in the shock transition to the market in the 1990s, but also in the ineffective state policy for rural development in the post-reform period, and in the absence of a strategic vision of the place of rural territories in the national space. Having analyzed the current state of the rural periphery and taking into account the need to shift to neo-endogenous rural development, we identify three priorities of state policy in the field of rural development in the North of Russia. They are as follows: development of the rural economy, modernization of rural infrastructure, and comprehensive development of human capital as the ultimate goal of all economic and social transformations. The findings of our work contribute to the formation of ideas about trends in spatial development of the northern regions of Russia and socio-economic issues of rural areas; they can be used by researchers in their studies on similar topics, and by public authorities when they need to work out strategic documents in the field of spatial development.
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Rural areas population’ migration factors in the European part of the Russian Arctic
Статья научная
The study of migration remains relevant, despite the presence of a wide range of papers by authors from Russia and other countries on the subject. The features of migration processes, in particular migration factors, in rural areas of the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation are of the greatest interest due to the current accumulation of sufficient amount of data for analysis. The article considers seven municipalities of the European part of the Russian Arctic and empirically determines statistically significant migration factors through correlation analysis. Data on 15 indicators were collected from 2008 to 2021. We reveal that the most significant migration factors are the development of education, the situation regarding transport links, food and financial security of the population, and housing provision. At the same time, the combination of statistically significant factors is unique for each individual municipal entity. The thesis, widespread in the migration theory, about the greater influence of economic factors on the dynamics of migration was only partially confirmed in the case of the rural areas under consideration. It was found that individual indicators, such as agricultural production and employment, generally do not affect migration decline (increase), and the established relationship with such an indicator as wage level cannot be interpreted unambiguously. With the growth of labor incomes, the outflow of rural residents from their native areas reduces, but does not disappear completely. In turn, the increase in nominal wages is to a large extent a reflection of the inflationary effect; therefore, it cannot be an effective mechanism for retaining the rural population.
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Rural territories' digitalization: from theory to practice
Статья научная
Large-scale application of digital technologies in management, social, and business processes determines the relevance of the inclusion of digital transformation factors in the socio-economic potential assessment of territorial systems. However, the applied methods of analyzing digitalization processes do not allow reflecting the influence of multi-level spatial set of digital transformation factors of life spheres on the process of potential formation and development of the country and its regions. The purpose of the research is to substantiate the need to include digitalization factors in the assessment of the aggregate potential of territorial socio-economic systems, to develop and test a methodology for integrative impact assessment of digital transformation factors on the state and socio-economic potential growth of territorial systems. The author uses the methods of analysis and synthesis, comparison and grouping, generalization and expert assessments, index and correlation methods of economic and statistical analysis. The working hypothesis of the undertaken research suggests a possibility of developing and applying a methodological approach to the analysis of the state and dynamics of digitalization processes reflecting the interdependence of characteristics of rural territories' potential and digital transformation parameters of rural life sphere. The paper defines the concepts of digitalization and digital potential, gives an annotated list of the main methodological approaches to assessing the territorial system's potential, proposes and tests the author's methodology version for analyzing and evaluating digitalization potential of rural territories, substantiates the model of a single digital platform for the purposes of state strategic planning for sustainable development of rural territories, structures the set of directions for digital transformation of region's life subjects, and forms a multi-level set of indicators for comparable assessment of the state and dynamics of digital transformation development which is useful for developing options for setting priorities when justifying strategic decisions in digitalization. The scientific novelty of the research is that for the first time there was an attempt to develop a methodological approach to assessing territorial system potential taking into account the factors of digital transformation of processes in the field of production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of public products.
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Статья научная
The following issue is a scientific report “Russia and the global crisis: first results”, which was represented by the author at the permanent Russian and French seminar on monetary and financial problems of the Russian economy, held in Vologda in April 2010. The text is published with abridgement.
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Russia in the epicenter of geopolitical turbulence: accumulation of global contradictions
Статья научная
The article examines the situation of Russia falling into the epicenter of geopolitical shifts in 2022, when the country found itself involved in the hybrid warfare with the Collective West. The novelty of our approach consists in reconstructing key events of the geopolitical competition of the last 15-20 years with the use of an extensive range of related concepts from various fields: economics (Trout’s mistake, neocolonialism), cybernetics (Ashby’s Law and Sedov’s Law), management (external management, hybrid warfare), synergetics (synergetic effect, system complexity), political science (security, freedom, power structure), political economy (Arrighi’s cycles of capital accumulation, global capital center, rate of return), institutionalism (shifting risks from the physical world to the social world), geography (horizontal diffusion of innovations), psychology (war of meanings, war of nerves). This made it possible to bring together many poorly compatible phenomena of different nature, synthesize the concepts used and reveal the logic behind the struggle of geopolitical players for world hegemony. To deepen the analysis, we provide our own typology of world wars and their characteristics. We prove that the special military operation in Ukraine exposed the impasse of Russia’s economic policy and consolidated other countries in a hybrid war against the United States, thereby becoming a key event in history and giving rise to a global geopolitical confrontation between the West and the Non-West. Our main conclusion is that Russia has objectively found itself in the epicenter of geopolitical turbulence, and, consequently, cannot avoid a direct collision with the Collective West; therefore, over the next 15-20 years the country will have to go through all the stages of a new hybrid world war.
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Russia in the epicenter of geopolitical turbulence: signs of eventual domination
Статья научная
The paper investigates a set of factors contributing to Russia’s transformation into a new world capital accumulation center in the next two to three decades. The novelty of our approach lies in the fact that we consider the current phase of global geopolitical turbulence through the prism of the capital accumulation cycles theory in order to determine the vector of future development of the world economic system. We dig into the topic by forming a comprehensive picture of Russia’s potential advantages that are quite versatile. Thus, we look into the following phenomena: geographical (ice decline in the Russian Arctic; Russia evolving from a land power into a sea power; natural resources endowment), philosophical (dialectical confrontation of homogeneity and heterogeneity of the world system), historical (syndrome of false contender for the role of a world capital accumulation center; passionarity of the ethnos), political (parade of sovereignties and imperial revanchists, diffusion of the nuclear syndrome, legitimization of the struggle against political and managerial opposition), political economy (cycles of capital accumulation; world capital accumulation center; Russia’s economy joining the world system of capitalism), economic (effectiveness of international economic sanctions; general-purpose technologies; industry cycles; regulatory and technology triads), demographic (demographic curse), cultural (openness of the Russian Civilization to immigrants, its civilizing experience in relation to other peoples, high civilizational absorption), military (latent and active phases of hybrid warfare; hybrid warfare paradox), factors and management effects (autonomous and authoritarian management, hegemon and leader models). This helped us to reconstruct the system of checks and balances formed around the Russian Federation in the hybrid warfare between the West and the Non-West. We deepen the analysis by providing our own interpretation of sea states and land states. The main conclusion of the research is that Russia possesses unique geopolitical advantages that allow it to successfully counteract the Collective West and eventually become a new leader of the world economic system.
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Russia in the epicenter of geopolitical turbulence: the hybrid war of civilizations
Статья научная
The article discusses mechanisms that are put into action during the hybrid war of civilizations that has unfolded at the present time. For this purpose, the concepts of two antagonistic megacivilizations - the West and the Non-West - have been introduced. We reveal the essence and genesis of the First and Second civilizational failures within Western civilization, reconstruct the anatomy of destruction of the national model of Russia’s social development after 1991 under the influence of the neocolonial governance system. We uncover and interpret the paradox of the lag in the development of the two megacivilizations, look into the genesis of the passionarity of the ethnos, and substantiate the primacy of geopolitical logic over economic logic. We provide an outlook of the current hybrid war between the West and the Non-West. The novelty of our approach consists in combining the knowledge of different sciences to explain social processes during the period of geopolitical turbulence. We look into philosophical phenomena (opposite dynamics of the material and spiritual spheres), cybernetic (full and partial cybernetic inversions), historical (birth of ethnic passionarity), political (hybrid wars), biological (neuroplasticity of the brain), cultural (cultural plasticity of civilization), economic (world currency, phenomenon of superprofits) factors. This made it possible to correlate objective and subjective factors in the confrontation between the two megacivilizations. The main conclusion of the study is that neither the West (USA) nor the Non-West (Russia) has clear advantages in the unfolding hybrid war of civilizations. The tactical superiority of the West is opposed to the strategic superiority of the Non-West; this situation does not allow us to make unambiguous predictions about the future winner.
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Russia's defense industry modernization: learning from history
Статья научная
The article is devoted to the issue of the defense industry complex modernization as a key direction in the strategy of strengthening Russia’s national security and ensuring its sustainable economic development, increasing its performance and competitiveness. It analyzes the historical experience of creating and using the science and technology potential of the USSR defense industry.
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Russia-Kazakhstan border-zone: sociological analysis
Статья научная
The article, based on the research conducted by the Center for Regional Sociology and Conflictology Studies of the Institute of Sociology of RAS, discusses the features of cross-border cooperation of Russia and Kazakhstan. It considers works of Western and Russian scientists to identify major approaches to the study of cross-border cooperation. It discusses strengthening of inter-ethnic and socio-economic integration and cross-border cooperation at the regional level. The borderland as a social phenomenon is an object of our study; the research is focused on local communities, understood as residents of Russian regions bordering with neighboring countries. This means that the research is devoted to local communities of the areas, located on Russia's borders with different states - with the new neighbors, which appeared after the USSR collapse (e.g., Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States in the West, Kazakhstan in the East) and the long-existing ones - Turkey, China, Mongolia, etc...
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