ABSTRACT This article reviews methodological approaches for a quantitative assessment of the influence of investment climates on regional bond markets. In turn, this assessment looks at how elements affecting the quality of investment climates influence the realization of regional bond markets and their potential for growth in the federal okrugs of the Russian Federation (RF). This article also describes a mathematical model of bond markets, which includes parameters depicting the investment climate’s effect on regional investment potential. With this, it presents quantitative analyses of the parameters affecting the investment climate. These analyses were obtained based on the regional ratings of the leading Russian analytical expert agencies. In addition, the article provides an assessment that uses this model to show the dynamics of the bond market in a regional context. Finally, it makes conclusions about the RF bond market’s potential for growth and the measures required for this growth.

ABSTRACT A very important feature of China’s policy for development of its national rare-earth industry is the creation of production chains “from raw materials to high-tech products.” Such chains are part of an exclusive orientation on internal demand. For its part, Russia currently faces the problem of selecting a path for the development of its rare-earth industry, and for this reason, the experience of China, which over the last 30 years has accumulated significant competencies in this area, is undoubtedly interesting. In particular, the selection of such a path is a hot topic as development begins on the Tomtor niobium-rare-earth field. However, in the authors’ opinion, Russia’s approach should be differentiated by its flexibility and should combine various tools from industrial and trade policy. It appears that introducing China’s policy tools into Russia would be difficult because of national specifics and the fact that construction of Russia’s rare-earth sector has begun under different starting conditions. Emphasis should be placed on inclusion in the global production chains of high-tech products, and the first significant steps toward this end should be to incentivize internal demand for high-tech products and their components. In this respect, the Chinese experience could be useful.

ABSTRACT The article describes the proposed method to determine global oil price. It suggest that to achieve this each country must set the value of its oil export, and use the collected data to calculate the weighted average value, which will be the global oil price.

ABSTRACT The article argues that it is the time to return to a significant share of the lost domestic market and use non-commodity exports to replenish the declining revenue from export of raw materials.

ABSTRACT The development of Russia’s oil and gas sector has its own essential features, due not only to the characteristics of its resource base but also to the significant influence of the spatial factor. Small and medium-sized companies oriented toward high tech and a priori innovation have more favorable prospects in previously developed areas, while access to new areas is more consistent with the operations and development of the leading large, vertically integrated companies.

ABSTRACT The article analyzes the early stages of the Russian strategy for Arctic development (in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). In prerevolutionary Russia and the early Soviet Union, the internationalization of Artic development was extremely controversial due to contravening advantages and risks. This encumbered the process of choosing and developing an optimal Arctic strategy and created a contradiction between the interests of Arctic economic development and the interests of national security on the Arctic flank.

ABSTRACT In recent years, the Russian Artic zone has seen a level of activity heretofore unseen in the post-Soviet era. A large proportion of Russia’s Arctic land administratively belongs to the Ural Federal District and Siberian Federal District; however, the majority of the activity in these regions does not include neighboring territories. The Ural and Siberian federal districts have hosted joint meetings consisting of scientists, entrepreneurs, the governors of the two districts, and the presidential plenipotentiary envoy. The focus of these meetings was the task of spreading the economic effect of northern projects beyond the Arctic zone and to exploit the scientific and industrial potential of the Urals and Siberia in the process of developing the Arctic.

ABSTRACT The large-scale development of the Russian Arctic is today combined with problems that have accumulated over the past decades. From the federal and regional levels to that of large corporations and small businesses, the search continues for effective ways of adapting to the complex realities of the region, using new methods of territorial integration and the interaction of industry, science, and education while activating the social sphere. At the legislative level, new territorial formations are being developed—these are called support zones and use existing clusters as powerful nuclei for the future socioeconomic development of the Arctic. Despite the expediency of support zones, their development has been fraught with the bureaucratization of the administrative process, insufficient attention to the lessons of Soviet territorial planning, and weak interaction between regional research centers and their methodological applications.

ABSTRACT Development of the non-oil sector and diversification of the national economy in Azerbaijan have become important issues for the government of Azerbaijan. The latter becomes an unavoidable policy issue for the government of Azerbaijan due to fluctuating oil prices in the world market, as well as to changing trends in international economics and politics. Oil and gas are considered a nonrenewable resource for the economy. On January 23, 2018, President Mr Ilham Aliyev said while attending an interactive session on Strategic Outlook: Eurasia, held as part of the Davos World Economic Forum, “As a source of major income we should look at technology, innovation, industry, entrepreneurship, and agriculture.” Although technology, innovation, industry, entrepreneurship, and agriculture have been identified as important sectors of the national economy and large-scale reforms are conducted, this article finds that Azerbaijan is still at the earliest stage of economic diversification and its economy is still fueled by oil and gas revenues. Despite the fact that main directions of the non-oil export sector in Azerbaijan have been identified and reforms are conducted, future progress will depend on how deeply the reforms will move.

ABSTRACT The Russian Federation is now pursuing a policy of privatizing businesses in which the state owns shares; the results of our research will help make predictions about the performance of these privatized companies. The main purpose of this article is to study the impact of state holding of business capital by the criterion of operating efficiency. The research showed that state involvement has a negative impact on company efficiency, but that companies with a natural monopoly obtain higher profits than the others.