Home – Home – Jornals – Region: Economics and Sociology 2021 number 2

The ability of all living and developing things to adapt to environmental conditions, change them, find means and ways to protect and preserve themselves is called resilience and viability. There are many sciences that study the viability of living organisms and self-replicating systems as a whole and its individual aspects. This work aims to quantify the viability of the constituent entities (regions) in the Russian Federation. To achieve this goal, we use the author’s viability coefficient that shows the change in viability, not its absolute level; 15 indicators of the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation for 2000-2018 were used to calculate the viability coefficient in this study. Having analyzed the viability coefficients calculated for 79 Russian regions, we see that their dynamics fluctuated during those years. The falls coincided with periods of global financial/economic crises and unfavorable geopolitical events for Russia. The oscillations amplitude decreased, and the coefficient values were approaching one, which indicates decelerated or ceased viability growth. The results obtained could prove to be useful in studying the state of national security in Russia and its administrative-territorial entities, as well as drafting regional socio-economic and demographic policies.

The article deals with assessing and analyzing the standard of living in a particular region. We aim to evaluate changes in the standard of living in the Republic of Buryatia from 2012 to 2018, relative to the period between 2005 and 2011. Based on the assumption that the standard of living is linked to expenditure patterns of households, we analyze structural shifts against the six components of monetary expenditures. The study presents point and interval estimates of structural shifts obtained with the bootstrap method. We check their statistical significance using the Mann-Whitney U and permutation tests. With the calculation results, we conclude that the standard of living in the Republic of Buryatia is declining, which is reflected in characteristic changes in consumer spending patterns and a negative gap between households ’ incomes and expenditures. The estimates of structural changes given in this article may be used by the Buryat government bodies as benchmarks or targets when drafting measures to improve the standard of living. Also, the described method is applicable in analyzing the standard of living at the federal district and national levels and for interregional comparisons.

The article is devoted to ensuring the quality of procurement in competitive procedures at the contract execution stage. Public medical institutions continue having problems with the deliveries of low-quality goods regardless of how contractual provisions are imposed. The study examines the procurement process and analyzes the public procurement of medical institutions in Moscow. We define the factors that affect the quality of delivered purchases, pointing out various procurement procedures and contract types that medical institutions use. The article also describes simple and complex contracts with verifiable and unverifiable quality. It estimates competition at the auctions where the number of participants is a decisive factor determining their success. We examine how the incentive system influences suppliers. The fixed-quality auction mechanism is compared to the negotiable-quality one. It is shown that the capacity of competitive procedures to ensure quality procurement depends on the customer discretion: the type of the contract, the comprehensiveness of the designed terms of reference, the choice of procurement method, and the degree of quality checks and the incentives system applied to suppliers. Following our research, we suggest that standardized goods or services should be purchased at open e-auctions, while those complex ones with difficult expense accounting must involve a negotiation stage. The systematized results help improve the approaches to analyzing policies in procurement quality assurance and well-thought-out contract policy implementation by public authorities.

The spread of the COVID-19pandemic is highly differentiated both among countries and areas within countries. This paper’s main objective is to identify regional characteristics influencing the extent of coronavirus infection in the Russian Federation during the second wave of the pandemic. We employ econometric modeling methods to assess relations between regional characteristics that reflect vulnerability or resistance of a region to infection and the scale of coronavirus proliferation. Among the resistance factors were the wealth and social capital accumulated by the region’s population. Residents in better-off Russian regions are less exposed to infection, while more impoverished regions, densely populated ones, regions with worse environmental issues, and the ones with older populations appear to be more vulnerable. We show the role of social capital in pandemic resistance: superior quality social capital is associated with lower infection and mortality rates. The results may inform regional policy measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other infections potentially.

The processes of depopulation of the country, almost all its regions, and localities are similar to those observed in almost all developed countries. They are further intensified during the thirty-year transformation of public relations in Russia itself. This article presents general and specific reasons for the depopulation of mental, social, economic, and political nature in the works of Russian geographers and demographers, sociologists and economists, ethnographers and political scientists. Summarizing and supplementing their results, we propose a verbal model of spatially mediated depopulation processes. It characterizes their logic and the dominance of economic factors regarding their progress in modern Russia. We critically evaluate the statistical accounting methods for geographically mediated depopulation and an ambiguous role of interregional and intraregional migration in the “desertification" of territories.

In the modern world, an objective need for significant socio-economic transformations is acute. This need is due to a few reasons, among which it is worth noting the income stratification, economic crises, and political instability. One of the effective tools aimed at solving these problems is social entrepreneurship. Given that social entrepreneurship is understudied and needs further elaboration, the article discusses the development of social entrepreneurship in the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This made it possible to identify a sufficient degree of unity of social entrepreneurship development in the territory of the EAEU on the functional-activity level. In these countries, social entrepreneurship shows high overlap in the overwhelming number of focus areas. It is most often represented in social protection and rehabilitation, healthcare, sports and tourism, and education. Organizations of social entrepreneurship, as a rule, target socially vulnerable categories of citizens. The problems inherent in the current state of social entrepreneurship in the EAEU countries are also very similar. They should include imperfection of its legislative regulation, insufficient infrastructure support, low level of identification in society, as well as lack of an accounting system and regular monitoring.

Rural local self-governance as an independent political institution shows clear signs of degradation, its efficiency and capacity decreasing markedly over time. With local administrations having fewer powers and financial resources, destructive phenomena and processes are taking shape: rural infrastructure facilities are deteriorating, and negative demographic trends are emerging. This study intends to assess how these trends can be counteracted with rural residents self-organizing, to identify and classify the forms of public initiative participation in local self-governance. Having generalized the results of sociological research and presented them as case studies of rural settlements in Novosibirsk Oblast and Krasnoyarsk Krai, we managed to determine the main types of formal and informal public participation practices in initiating projects aimed at territorial improvement, social support, and other local issues. We conclude that local authorities’ insufficient performance, poor resource endowment, and unpreparedness for dialogue with the population encourage informal types of public participation in the life of the village. Such informal practices can draw local communities closer and help not only preserve but improve rural settlements. If the rural population is actively involved in various forms of public participation, it may partially compensate for the local government defects and counteract negative trends pertinent to sustaining the village.

The article identifies and analyzes in detail the root problems that hinder the strengthening of EAEU integration, particularly between Russia and Kazakhstan. It also considers the challenges of 2020, which have directly affected cooperation within the EAEU, exacerbating Eurasian integration’s previously existing limitations. Inconsistent macroeconomic policies, highly volatile EAEU member states’ currencies, and the EAEU economy being dominated by extractive industries are all recognized as major constraints to successful cooperation. The latter leads to weak intra-regional ties between member states and exposes the association to external shocks. As for macroeconomic policy discrepancies, the article explains them by showing how different EAEU countries are in their social and economic development. Given that the COVID-19 pandemic exerts additional negative pressure on integration processes within the EAEU, we conclude that Russia and Kazakhstan, the largest EAEU members, should take the initiative in enhancing cross-country cooperation by systematically addressing the challenges faced by the union.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a strategic project initiated by China and aimed at improving international cooperation. It calls for pursuing coherent infrastructure solutions, seamless trade, and financial interconnectedness by strengthening political interaction between partner states to achieve mutual benefits. The Sino-Russian ties within the Belt and Road Initiative, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Greater Eurasian Partnership have become an integral part of their general strategic cooperation. Conjugating the development strategies is crucial for this cooperation to reach meaningful results. Comprehensive partnership between China and Russia, which includes their strategic interactions, relies on the basic principles outlined in the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation Between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. Now, at a time when the world is undergoing tremendous turmoil, Sino-Russian cooperation is not only an important external development factor for both countries but also a guarantee of regional and global stability.

The article examines methodological problems of managing the social and economic development of municipalities, considers approaches to drafting a new concept of municipal management for socio-economic processes, and analyzes current approaches to studying problems of municipal management based on socio-economic modeling. We make a case for employing a systematic approach in municipal management and modern economic and mathematical tools to improve the efficiency of management decisions. We design methodological foundations and apparatus to model the economic management processes for municipalities as complex institutional systems. The article proposes a balance-optimization model to forecast and manage socio-economic development processes in municipalities. The proposed methods rely on the following assumptions. Municipal management is a complex multidimensional process that implies dealing with strategic and tactical objectives. Allowing for the long-term goals, the need to better balance decisions in municipal management culminates in the need to improve multifunctional tools. Municipal development is exercised over fiscal cycles equal to one calendar year. Each such cycle involves significant managerial decisions that affect how the budget will replenish and where the funds will be allocated in the current year and onward. They also influence the qualitative, non-financial indicators demonstrating the city development. The proposed model predicts municipal development indicators for the long term. We use a positive generalization for the model based on the case studies of two towns, Berdsk (Novosibirsk Oblast) and Kyzyl, to review how it is applied to the largest municipality in the Russian Federation, namely the city of Novosibirsk. The research results have shown that this model can be used to forecast changes in a municipality that follow certain types of managerial actions. Moreover, it is possible to calculate the indicators of municipal development in the process of fiscal cycles, where each contains significant management decisions that affect budget replenishment in a few subsequent years instead of just the following one, as well as influence the social and economic indicators of the city development.

This paper aims to improve the methodological tools for analyzing the spatial effects of intraregional fiscal decentralization and suggest a way to increase the municipalities' tax potential in Russia. The growth of local tax powers - a key element of broader fiscal decentralization - is favorable for the efficiency of budget expenditures, local development, and improvement of quality of life. In this paper, the indicator of intraregional fiscal decentralization is the share of local budgets’ revenues from personal income tax (PIT) in consolidated regional revenues from PIT, i.e., the share of local PIT. We use structural and spatial correlation analysis, grouping and analysis of regional legislation. The article reveals the lack of growth of local authorities’ tax powers in 2014-2018, which underscores the problem of small local powers. It is established that the decentralization of PIT is present only if there is a small tax potential of a region, and as the latter grows, the former decreases. This indicates a lack of positive fiscal incentives to exercise effective local spending and develop the tax base. We propose and test a method of analyzing the spatial effects of the share of local PIT and discover that the spatial effects are present and positive. This points to inter-regional cooperation in the field of fiscal policy; that is, the regions are guided by each other while tackling the issue of intraregional tax decentralization. We also suggest a method for allocating general grants from the federal government to foster the local tax potential, using the spatial effects found. It is shown that neighboring regions will coordinate their intraregional tax decentralization, which will increase the amount of funds disposable by municipalities by a larger amount than the amount of the transfer allocated. The results can be used in the federal policy of increasing local tax powers and capacity.

The Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering SB RAS has traditionally served a communication platform for representatives of science, business, education, and state to interact with one another. This article gives an overview of how the problems of integration cooperation within innovation ecosystems were discussed at the regular April research-to-practice seminar on the challenges of high-tech business.