Home – Home – Jornals – Region: Economics and Sociology 2010 number 3

The paper presents the author's vision of the Russian future made through comparative assessment of the world situation. We offer a scheme and appropriate calculations of how the scenarios could be consequently developed over the levels of spatial hierarchy. The forecasts for the Siberian Federal District -considered as four macroregions - are made. We formulated the proposals on how such hierarchic forecast methodology could be applied to other federal districts and Northern territories

The paper shows the growing contradictory tendencies which govern the world line-up and force cohesion in the XXI century. We present our assessment of the environmental, resource and transportation potential in Northern and Arctic regions; and we prove that Russian Northern and Arctic regions are of special interest to the country in ensuring the national economic, geo-politic, defensive and other interests. The energy resources and transportation potential in Northern and Arctic regions, as we believe, could be one of the tools advisable to modernize the national economy and ensure - through realizing an effective governmental socio-economic policy - the sustainable spatial development in Northern and Arctic regions.

Economic protection of regions is one of the set of elements of a national economic safety system. The paper discusses the key notions of economic safety, and it offers a technique to estimate levels of regions' economic protection

The study assesses to what degree the economic space in the Russian Federation was integrated and homogenous over 1998-2007. To assess such integrity, we base upon a hypothesis of the growing integration tendencies occurring under globalization conditions; and our verification of the hypothesis is made in association with the scopes and spatial specialization of regional economies. То assess the homogeneity, we verify the hypothesis of whether ГЗ-and ст-convergence exist in the Russian economic space

The paper presents an indirect method for assessing directions of financial flows between regions. We tested whether the regional investment potential could be analyzed through applying data provided by the national accounts statistics (such indicators as the gross profit and gross mixed income), and data provided by the regional statistics (an index of potential investment resources calculated on the base of some indicators). As we determined, both show similar results - the growing financial potential in the period of high economic growth rates. We introduce a special coefficient showing a region/industry investment rating calculated according to the "sender-addressee" principle. The dynamics of this coefficient allows assessing the potential scopes and directions of redistribution of investment resources between regions

The paper analyzes a current system of the state-guaranteed and municipal orders for providing fiscal services. As we show, a current regulatory and methodical framework proved to be too formal, and it does not allow using the system of orders as an effective tool of fiscal policy. We present the new approaches; they, in contrast to standard methods, include incentives to develop local markets of fiscal services through applying the formal approaches which help assess the different consumers' demand for fiscal services. This would allow a medium-term forecast of quantitative variables of the orders and budgetary allocations.

The paper presents the author's understanding of the post-crisis development in Russian rural communities; analyzes the results of liberal transformations; shows the specific features of a current rural development model; outlines what would happen to Russian rural communities in the future; and describes mechanisms for achieving the strategic goals of future development

The paper proves that a demographic crisis in Northern Russia is much deeper than the official vital statistics shows. The most severe problems are the young age-specific mortality patterns; a high share of deaths due to external factors and diseases of exogenous etiology; low birth rates among those who live in traditionally Russian Northern areas, and among Aboriginals who live in the areas with the completed demographic transition; a high degree of family life disruption; and interdependence between the uncompleted demographic transition of Northern Aboriginal peoples and their unfavorable qualitative birth characteristics and high child mortality. Just they predetermine the goals and tasks of Northern demographic policy.
Keywords: Northern areas, natural population decline, age pattern, demographic transition, life expectancy, child mortality, quantitative and qualitative aspects of natality, marital and family relationship, demographic policy

The study analyses the issues of the development of the West-Siberian oil-and-gas complex. Before the 1990-s, when the complex was creating as a new national base of oil-and-gas production, the country faced the difficulties due to the lack of investments, equipment, materials, and vehicles, as well as a housing deficit, whereas later the reducing efficiency of the complex's operating was observed. The causes of this economic phenomenon are analyzed here. We also outline a long-run policy of the oil-and-gas production in the region.

The paper considers a technique to interpret the information of the answers to open questions, which is of the unstructured nature, as the structured information. Such technique allows building the typologies useful for analysis of the spatial development structures of touristic clusters

The paper considers the issues of how to assess the efficiency of the large-scale investment projects. We offer an approach to choosing a preferred project among competitive ones when making a decision on the selection of an investment project. The approach is grounded upon both the principals of system analysis applied in the fuzzy sets theory and expert technologies. Our special focus is on how to assess the investment costs and their fluctuations depending on investment risks while the preproject analysis is being carried out. To make our calculation, we use a simulated case-study on «Transportation Network Project for Russian Far North and Far East».

The paper offers an approach to assess the economic, social and ecologic consequences of desertification. We identify the key factors producing economic damage. The ecologic-economic analysis of a simulative area of intense desertification is presented. To assess economic and social consequences of desertification, we use the data of the public opinion poll

The study analyzes present approaches applied to assess how effective the expenditures for public health care are. We show that the techniques based on nothing but assessment of the resource components have some defects as they fail to allow for social effects. To overcome this shortage, we recommend the technique which is of 5-years practice in the Vologda Oblast, and which compounds the financial and demographic analysis. We present the results of our economic analysis made by applying such technique.

The paper analyzes methodological issues of how to assess the competitiveness of municipal units; considers the issues of designing a strategy of socio-economic municipal unit development, and issues of planning the incomes and expenditures of local budgets; and analyzes scenarios of the socio-economic development in cities

The paper shows the ways to make municipal budgets more stable such as the lower shares of conditional intergovernmental transfers, the greater tax revenues and greater non-tax ones to local budgets, and a new distribution of the spending powers and revenue sources between governments. The analysis of the structure of municipal fiscal revenues is presented too.

The study considers a model of relative demand-supply for an aggregated segment of small business, and a model of an individual's rational market behaviour. Our econometric calculations show that, when the reforms started, the labour demand in the segment of small business depended on such indicators as a ratio of incomes in new sectors to the incomes in traditional sectors, and the level of the population's previous cash accumulations and their inclinations towards risks. Entrepreneurs' trust toward local authorities and the relatively high economic potential of regional institutes induced the higher labour demand in the segment of small business.