Approaches to analyzing the geographic distribution of inequality in high-tech business development
S.R. KHALIMOVA
Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia
Keywords: high-tech companies, knowledge-intensive companies, spatial concentration, spatial inequality, interregional inequality, map of Russian regions
Abstract
Achieving of long-term economic development is impossible without relying on high-tech business (HTB). It is high-tech and knowledge-intensive companies that contribute to the emergence and implementation of technological changes in the economy, which determine the transition to a higher level of development. The HTB companies’ development is the subject of numerous studies, with the regional level of analysis being particularly emphasized. Existing studies of Russian HTB show significant differentiation in regional development, they also identify characteristics of the regional environment that provide favorable conditions for the activities of high-tech and knowledge-intensive companies. The spatial distribution of Russian high-tech and knowledge-intensive companies is extremely uneven. The most successful companies are located in a limited number of regions, while there are differences between the European and Asian parts of Russia. Given the importance of the geographical level of the analysis, this article is aimed at substantiating the need to single out the geographical distribution of HTB as an independent subject of analysis. This paper presents a generalization of existing approaches to the analysis of the development of Russian HTB at the regional level, which reveals how the spatial factor is taken into account in the study of Russian practice. It is shown that despite the regional aspect of the analysis, the region is often considered as a combination of certain economic conditions, and not as a geographical unit. Thus, especially taking into account the great geographical diversity of Russian regions, there is a need for additional analysis of the inequality of regional development of HTB in terms of the geographical distribution of high-tech and knowledge-intensive activities. At the same time, the need to single out the regions of Asian Russia as a separate object of analysis is emphasized, since the trends in the development of HTB in this territory have their own distinctive features.
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