Home – Home – Jornals – Region: Economics and Sociology 2019 number 3

The article analyzes regional factors affecting the development of high-tech business in Russia. This research is empirically based on the revenues of high-technology and knowledge-intensive industries from the SPARK (Russian acronym for the System of Professional Analysis of Markets and Companies), as well as the region’s economic development indicators published by Rosstat. Following the similarity analysis conducted for selected companies, its results show that Russian high-tech business is mainly represented by science-driven services and characterized by the lack of territorial uniformity. Significant territorial differentiation is illustrated with an index of regional high-tech business distribution comparing relative regional indicators with the national one. We evaluate the effect of regional conditions in view of five groups of factors which reflect the «regional profile», region’s labor capability, investment capability, and science and innovation capability, as well as characteristics of its digital infrastrucure. Using econometric methods, we demonstrate that the development of high-tech business in the region is positively influenced by such factors as the high share of manufacturing in the economy, the availability of human resources with secondary vocational education, computer coverage, the involvement of personnel in R&D, and technological innovation. Simulated results show that the characteristics of science and innovation capability have the most prominent impact on the high-tech industry.