Home – Home – Jornals – Region: Economics and Sociology 2015 number 1

Using the problems of transport support of resource extraction in Russia's Arctic shelf as an example, there is explained and implemented an approach to selecting an appropriate strategy to solve a semistructured problem under the uncertainty of the scenario. To structure the problem, a tree of objectives is drawn, scenarios and strategies are described. Scenarios indicate possible states of the environment where the problem is solved. Strategies differ in ways of transportation: mainly by sea (the Northern Sea Route) or Siberian rivers. It is shown that the construction of the Transpolar mainline is necessary for all the strategies. The authors have developed and implemented in software a method for collecting and processing expert data used to estimate numerically the importance of objectives. Following the same method, one evaluates the degrees of how the general objective of each strategy is achieved under each scenario included in the evaluation matrix. The appropriate strategy is selected according to the evaluation matrix with the help of strategic criteria (Laplace, Wald, Hurwitz and Savage).

In March 2014, the US and the EU announced trade and financial sanctions against Russia and a ban on the movement of some individuals. Although none of the competent international bodies approved or endorsed these sanctions, several other countries — mostly NATO members and allies of the USA — joined them later. Sanctions are imposed by a state or a group of states, so they must also be opposed by a state. Moreover, the state applying sanctions is usually stronger than the one withstanding them. Sanctions are a weapon. Therefore, it is necessary not only to defend oneself from them, but also to deprive those who impose them the ability and desire to fight. For this purpose, it is required at least to protect one's weak points and links (it is even better not to have them) and to increase the power. Basing on the 2011–2012 official statistics and using his own technique, the author has calculated the levels of economic protection from sanctions for 82 subjects of the Russian Federation. Depending on these levels, the regions have been assigned to one of four groups of protection: good, acceptable, questionable and weak. It turned out that judging by the selected set of indicators, a half of the subjects of the Russian Federation are of low sensitivity to sanctions: their level of protection is either good or acceptable. The author suggests some measures to improve the security of Russian regions from the sanctions imposed on the country.

The paper analyses reasons for merging of regions of the Russian Federation into a united subfederal region. It manifests positive and negative consequences of such transformation. It is concluded that neither domestic nor foreign sciences give an answer to the question of how to assess the economic effect from merging of regions. The problems that arise during the qualitative assessment of the consequences from merging of regions are considered, as well as rankings of variants of merging. They are solved with ordinal variables-gradations of scale that state in points (ranks) the factor's influence on the success of merging of regions under study-and with the overmedian ranks method which differentiate variants according to their attractiveness. Ranks are integers on a given range assigned to each of the compared variants by experts. They are suitable for solving those tasks which have their resulting indicators naturally interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively, and if the same interpretation can be given to the parameters (factors) influencing the result. The article examines a model example of the Komi Republic: whether it is effective to merge it with one of the seven neighboring regions. The priority of merging with one of the neighboring regions is identified by the overmedian ranks method.

This paper deals with the problems of modernization and enhancement of regional socio-economic development governance in the context of elaboration of a new system of public administration and local government. An innovative approach to regional and municipal governance has been offered, the peculiar feature of which being taking into account of the objective conditions and controversies of socio-economic development of a region, the orientation of management at the improving of regional economy competitiveness and the use of new instruments of state regulation, planning and forecasting methods at a regional level. The ways of enhancing regional and municipal governance on the basis of implementation of innovative management practices have been identified. Based on performance evaluation of regional governance and generalization of its experience, and on the basis of comparative analysis of pre-planning schemes and procedures, diagnostics and forecasting methods, a new system of planning and forecasting documents ensuring the unity and interconnection between regional and municipal levels of administration has been worked out.

The article gives the results of the analysis of tangible assets owned by or at the disposal of Russian households, i.e. their non-financial wealth. The structure of ownership for each of the assets and the complex (non-monetary) assessment of how well households are provided with assets are considered separately for each federal district and inhabited locality with different population. The paper demonstrates regional and settlement discrepancies in the amount of property or non-financial wealth of Russian households. It has been found that the characteristics of the place where a household resides make a substantial contribution to the household's chances to have a certain level of non-financial wealth; but this contribution is significantly lower than one of the characteristics reflecting how strong and prolonged are the efforts of the household members to create wealth. It is revealed that differences in wealth are more closely related to the settlement aspects of the household's place of residence than to the regional ones.

In the determination of morbidity and mortality the role the behavioral factor, i.e. people's attitude towards their own health, is constantly increasing. Lifestyle and health-promoting activity define about 50% of public health. Using statistical data and sociological monitoring, we analyze the major trends in public health and lifestyle of the population in Vologda Oblast. In Vologda Oblast 46% of the population are content about their health. The number of respondents who rated their health as bad or very bad fell by almost one half. It is shown that the number of people who see themselves as partly or fully responsible for their own health is growing in the region. In 2013, this figure increased to 88% of the population. It is revealed that only 6% of the population in the region does not demonstrate any destructive components of self-preservation behavior, while 94% has at least one practice of self-destructive nature. However, year after year, positive forms of self-preservation behavior are becoming more common among the people in Vologda Oblast.

The paper proposes a model of public administration based on information and communication technologies (ICT). The model includes the following units: open data, crowdsourcing and open government. In order to work out in detail the transfer of knowledge and competencies from the society to the state, we have studied crowdsourcing and its potential use in public administration as a tool to improve the efficiency of state authorities. The article compiles a typology of best practices and applications according to degrees of citizen engagement in governance and political activities. Opportunities and obstacles to the use of the new model of public administration based on ICT are analyzed by the administration of Novosibirsk Oblast. There are recommendations on how to involve the scientific potential of Novosibirsk's Akademgorodok in the governance of the region.

The paper justifies a hypothesis that the timber sales auctions provide the most reliable data for the assessment of forest rent. It proposes an approach to estimate the forest rent in the Russian economy using the open data interface of governmental services on timber sale auctions. The weighted OLS method is used for the assessment of linear specification of forest rent taking the volume of logging as weighting variable. Both Paretian and Ricardian modeling of forest rent is performed depending on the main rent-productng factors: type of forest stand, trunk volume, and removal distance. The suggested approach has been tested on the dataset of timber sale auctions conducted in different Russian regions in 2013. The results of performed estimation show that the consolidated budget of the Russian Federation currently lacks three quarters of the actual forest rent.

The paper presents a methodological approach to the simultaneous solution of problems of the strategic, tactical and operational planning in production of complex electrical equipment with long manufacturing process. Novelty of research consists in the combination and coordination of optimization of volume calendar planning (strategic, tactical), current calendar planning (scheduling), network planning and management. The main difficulty is to build a model of production scheduling according to leading groups of equipment from the entire list of products basing on the data from the network planning process for each product separately. In addition, the formulation of the problem above presents a new approach to accounting for duration of works (operations) as not a multiple of the selected time unit. In the end, the joint problem of production scheduling with resource constraints is reduced to the problem of linear integer programming, of which the solution is feasible with the use of the existing software.

A comparative analysis of existing legal acts allocated tasks, mechanisms and instruments of innovation policy used at the regional level. Following the analysis, there has been formed the complete list of government administrative tasks for innovation policy of sub-federal management. By comparing the resulting list with the space where innovation policy is implemented at different stages of the innovation cycle, the authors managed to identify bottlenecks and flaws in promotion of demand for innovation at the regional level. An elaborated methodical approach to identifying bottlenecks in the regional policy which depress demand for innovative products has been evaluated with evidence from Novosibirsk Oblast. As a result, this article proposes methods to improve administrative tasks, mechanisms and instruments of regional policy implementation aimed at promoting demand for innovation.

The paper analyzes constitutional and theoretical aspects needed to save and increase diversity and establish unity of a federal state. It examines the constitutional status of the federal states (Bundeslcinder), their competence and how their powers shall be compared with the ones of the Federation. It is demonstrated how a federal state can exist when, on the one hand, it takes into account regional peculiarities of each «component» of the federation and, on the other hand, forms a rather homogeneous matter which reflects equivalent (or at least comparable) living conditions. The article also shows possible consequences that constitutional entrenchment of the principle of federal structure could have for the regional development practices and how the unity (uniformity) guaranteed by the Constitution can and should be implemented in the framework of a federal state.

The paper examines the approaches to assessing the competitiveness of a country. It is shown that the competitiveness rankings produced by the World Economic Forum do not correlate with the ones in innovation and R&D. It is concluded that international R&D comparisons based on the GERD/GDP or BERD/GDP alone are not telling enough. These ratios could only be considered as performance indicators in case of equal levels of distribution of R&D expenses. Financial background to sciences and R&D is generally considered as a key factor to competitiveness, but, as the author has demonstrated, the structure of R&D spending also has an important role.

The paper defines state regional development policy as an economic category. It is shown which strategic objectives will be solved by an integrated approach to regional innovative development policy development and implementation. The article presents a classification of territories according to importance of the National Innovation System and how well the level of innovative potential meets the challenges of social and economic development. The author describes his concept of a «territory of innovative development», principles to form local innovation systems, and approaches to innovative development of territories with low capacity for innovation. A specific example is given of how to implement the concept. Mechanisms of direct and indirect financial support for territories of innovative development are justified. The article designs an algorithm for formation of local innovation systems.

This paper examines the applicability of the concept of endogenous regional development to Central European post-socialist countries. Endogenous development emerged in response to the pressures of the global economy in Western Europe, and focuses on exploiting locally rooted competitive advantages that can counteract the cost advantages of less developed economies, providing a «high road» of socio-economic development. In Central Europe, industrial restructuring has mainly followed a development path based on foreign direct investment, which has reinvigorated competitiveness, but now faces the need to go beyond low costs, and counteract the unfavourable effects of external capital dependency. The paper identifies two different paths to encourage endogenous development, drawing attention to their institutional background and the expected consequences on territorial development.

The purpose of the article is to show that the unevenness of innovative development of Russian regions is the objective reality due to historical, technological, social and economic aspects of placement and operation of innovative factors in the territories of Russia and other countries. It is suggested that in the context of globalization the social and economic effects of «knowledge spillover» will intensify, while the processes of cooperation and competition in innovation regions will accelerate the technological change in structure and innovation culture of countries and regions. The role of regional dislocation of the RAS institutes is shown in the raising level of innovation development of the mega-space through combined investment in science and technology using the example of Siberia. The participation of the SB RAS and the SB RAMS illustrates the possibility of cooperation in technology platforms both in the high-tech field and for resource production. The three priority areas of cooperation have significant scientific groundwork for the new industrialization in Siberia and the possibility of combining the interests of the federal subjects in a number of existing technology platforms with the participation of the SB RAS institutes in order to develop new research directions, communication processes, including those in the form of innovative clusters and network structures. There is a justified conclusion that competition in science, technology and innovation emerges new markets and gives a competitive advantage in creation and use of knowledge in spatial areas of different regions. The sectoral knowledge spillover from the fields of nanoceramics and composite materials into oil and gas production may increase the chance of successful industrialization in Siberia. The article shows that cooperation and competition is possible between clusters in the European part and the Siberian regions, which were created with government support in the territories of Tomsk and Novosibirsk Oblasts, Altai and Krasnoyarsk Krais. It is expected that the agglomeration effects in the European part of Russia, the Urals, the Volga region, Siberia and the Far East together with a selective policy of knowledge spillover will bring economic and social benefits through the symbiosis of high-tech and traditional industries.

Based on the Proceedings of the XIII All-Russian Forum ((Strategic Planning in the Regions and Cities of Russia: Revisioning Strategies, Renewing Meanings» (St. Petersburg, October 2014) and the poll among representatives of regional and local authorities, there have been identified difficulties and obstacles that regions will face in the implementation of the Federal Law No. 172. «On the Strategic Planning in the Russian Federation».