The relationship between the scientific and technological development index and the economic structure of Russian regions

This paper continues our research on the regional analysis of scientific and technological development. The relationship between the level of scientific and technological development and economic indicators reflecting a region's specialization has not been sufficiently analyzed in the literature, which defines the relevance of this study. The aim of the work is to identify the presence or absence of relationship between the scientific and technological development index and the established industrial specialization of a region. The importance of identifying such patterns is driven by the fact that the Strategy for Technological Development presupposes the creation of a matrix for scientific and technological development programs in the regions. The research was based on 2022 statistical data published on the websites of Rosstat and the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education. We applied an original aggregated index proposed earlier by us for the analysis. The study relied on methods of mathematical statistics: cluster, variance, and correlation analysis. As a result, we established a fairly stable relationship between the economic structure and scientific and technological development: regions with a more diversified economic structure have a higher scientific and technological development index. As expected, a strong correlation was found between the share of scientific activity in a region and its scientific and technological development, particularly for the sub-index responsible for science funding. This paper can be useful for creating the aforementioned matrices for regional state programs of scientific and technological development, taking into account the type of region and the criteria by which a region can be classified as a particular type.