The paper examines the issues related to the identifying factors that influence the attitude of Russian people towards immigrants. As such factors, we selected the individual characteristics of the respondents (gender, age, educational level, marital status, income level, etc.), as well as indicators characterizing the respondent’s place of residence (region, type of settlement) and the economic situation in the corresponding region. (gross regional product per capita, unemployment rate, share of industries in which migrants are most employed, etc.). The analysis was based on the data of the 7th World Value Survey for Russia in 2017, containing information on 1,810 respondents from 61 Russian regions. With the help of linear regression models and geographically weighted regression was shown that the best attitude towards immigrants demonstrated young people and older generation, respondents with higher education and with average or high-income level. However, attitudes towards immigrants are varying sufficiently and greatly depend on the place of residence. The best attitude towards immigrants demonstrate residents of non-capital cities, as well as residents of the Samara and Saratov regions, the worst – residents of the most poor and most rich regions.Attitude towards immigrants is also improving with an increase in the share of construction and trade in the economy of the region (these industries employ the most immigrants). Local residents are gradually getting used to immigrants, the higher the proportion of migrants who came from abroad, the better the residents of the respective region relate to immigrants

Why do similar economic and political institutions function differently in various cultures? This paper tries to identify potentially important factors related to the institutional quality. We investigate the relationship between cultures, cultural dimensions: non-tradition in particular, and formal institutions to explain differences in the quality of institutions around the world. We use a measure of traditional values, structured by Inglehart and Baker, from the World Values Survey, to extend the literature on the determinants of institutions’ quality. We show that differences in traditional values are suggestive to explain differences in the quality of institutions across countries. The OLS method is utilized in order to analyze the factors of institutional quality in sixty countries in 2010–2014. In this study, the OLS models are employed in order to understand the key factors of institutional differences among countries in the period of 2010–2014. The empirical model results show that (i) non-tradition is a reliable significant variable with positive contributions on six institutional quality variables, (ii) urbanization has unexpected negative effects on some institutional quality indicators like rule of law, political stability and voice/accountability. However, it has meaningful contribution to control of corruption in the countries, (iii) economic development have increasing impacts on the majority of the institutional quality variables, (iv) while education has positive effects on government effectiveness, political stability and regulation quality, it has negative unexpected impacts on rule of law and voice/accountability, (v) openness has only effects on corruption and political stability, (vi) there are non-linear relationships between dependent variable(s) and independent variables rather than linear relationships

Институтом экономических исследований Дальневосточного отделения Российской академии наук, при поддержке Научного Совета по вопросам регионального развития при Президиуме РАН, издается научный журнал «Пространственная экономика».

The concept of equal opportunities was shaped on the back of western social philosophy at the end of the XX century as a result of the development of egalitarian theory of social justice. According to it, the determinants of individual achievements should be divided into two categories: ‘circumstances’, which individual has no control on, and ‘efforts’, which individuals should be responsible for. Our research deals with measuring opportunity inequality in the Russian Federation and its regions. The regions of the Russian Federation are well known to be very heterogeneous, consequently, the variation of their social and economic indicators is significant. As a result, the level of opportunity inequality may fluctuate significantly among the regions. Our research is designed to test the hypothesis. The analysis is based on the data from the survey ‘Survey of Income and Participation in Social Programs’ conducted by the Federal state statistics service of the Russian Federation. The estimation technique is parametric and based on the ex-ante definition of equality of opportunity. The mean logarithmic deviation is used as inequality index. According to our calculations, the contribution of opportunity inequality to the labor income inequality in Russia is approximately 30%. Spatial factors (region of residence and type of settlement) are responsible for nearly 70% of opportunity inequality. Absolute level of opportunity inequality varies widely among regions – from 0,0117 to 0,0547 in 2017. The contribution of opportunity inequality to inequality of labor income ranges from 7,24 to 27,35% in 2017 across regions. The growth of opportunity inequality is shown to be correlated with the decrease of the economic development rate and the increase of labor income inequality

The article analyzes the dynamics of the Russian economy during the crisis of 2015–2016 and subsequent stagnation in 2017–2019. The main components of economic policy are examined and institutional trends that determine macroeconomic dynamics, in particular, consumer demand, investment in fixed assets, foreign trade conditions and the orientation of economic institutions, are evaluated. A comparison is made of the immediate causes and institutional conditions for the formation and manifestation of crises in the Russian economy. It is shown that, in accordance with the general theory of economic cycles and crises, external resource demand shocks are a direct reason for the formation of the medium-term financial and economic cycle in the Russian economy, integrated into the global market environment. A comparative study of the scenarios and parameters of the Russian economic crises of the 1990s and 2000s showed that the main reason global shocks, standard in scale and mechanism of impact, have a deeper and longer impact on the Russian economy, creating large-scale and deep financial economic crises, has been ongoing since the early 1990s. and the crisis of fundamental institutional conservatism that has not been overcome so far, which prevented the formation of internal compensators and stabilizers that can weaken or even block the effect of external shocks. It is shown that the exit of the Russian economy from the crisis of 2015–2016 is blocked by two main factors: 1) the beginning of the next cycle of recession in the global economy, which creates new demand and resource external shocks, 2) the stability of the extractive nature of Russian economic institutions that are not oriented towards creating a platform economic growth, but, on the contrary, on the deactivation of growth resources

The authors studied the actual policies and emerging effects of state incentivizing of investment activity instruments under the ‘new model’ of development for the Far East of Russia. There were shown the specifics of localizing investments in the resource region in shape of preferential regimes of Territories of Advanced Social and Economic Development (TAD or ASEZ Advanced Special Economic Zones) and also extraterritorial preferences as direct subsidies from the federal budget to infrastructure projects of strategically important investment projects and regional investment projects. The effects of these instruments employed in the Far Eastern Federal District in 2014–2020 demonstrate that the package of state measures formed for attracting investments and its separate elements (royalty benefits, the criterion of maximum attraction of private investments for every rouble of budget ones, etc.) have promoted investments mainly in extraction of minerals in the total surveyed range of support instruments. The outcome of these preferences was further growth of resource-based industries in the Far East economy structure (which to a certain extent predetermines the perspective economy structure of the macro region). The analysis of the rate of accumulation (a share of investments in the regional Gross Domestic Product) as a factor of economic growth showed that the majority of Far Eastern regions (except the mono-mineral Sakhalinskaya and Magadanskaya oblasts and the Chukotsky Autonomous Okrug) do not reassert the role of resource-based industries as key drivers for their economic growth which would have justified state incentives for extraction of mineral resources in particular. Certain modifications have been revealed in the very instruments of state incentives under the ‘new model’ of development in the Far East of Russia among which is a blurring of border lines between preferential territories to legitimize incentivizing of mineral companies; a changed (reduced) role of regional authorities in implementation of different instruments; forming ‘multi-layer’ preferences in the interest of mineral companies. It was demonstrated that in the surveyed contour of key actors interacting in the process of implementing different instruments of a ‘new model’ for development of the Far East of Russia (federal and regional administration, businesses) with greater vividness comes to the fore a tendency for shaping key outcomes of preferences in mineral companies

Институтом экономических исследований Дальневосточного отделения Российской академии наук, при поддержке Научного Совета по вопросам регионального развития при Президиуме РАН, издается научный журнал «Пространственная экономика».

The article studies the proposed method of distribution of subsidies among the subjects of the Russian Federation based on the calculations of ‘model’ budget. The authors analyzed the real consequences of the mechanism of redistribution of total subsidies aimed at equalizing the budgetary security and clarified the method of increasing the subsidies to the least secure regions to realize two goals: 1) provide equal access to constitutional rights to all the citizens; 2) limit the burden on federal budget and decrease the level of subsidies to the federal subjects of Russia. The analysis of consequences of using ‘model’ budget was based on the Far Eastern subjects of Russia. There are positive and negative sides to changing to the ‘model’ budget method for the Far East. In case of using the ‘model’ budget there is a discrepancy between budget expenses and estimated demand for subsidies. It is necessary to fully account for appreciation factors and coefficients, population numbers and the specifics of transportation expenses of institutions that provide the access to constitutional rights, including the specifics of transport network of every federal subject. The hypothesis is that the ‘model’ budget has to be based on the norms of financial expenses required to carry out the authority by a particular subject. Otherwise the regional budgets will be based on the current actual average expenses, which will lead to the transfer of budgetary means from the northern and Far Eastern subjects to the others

One of the main issues of the regional economic and investment policy of the Russian Federation is the search of endogenous growth sources of its regions. The well-known regional models do not consider this aspect, assuming external demand as the main source of regional growth. The dynamic properties of the regional economic system remain beyond these models. In this article the dynamic investment function based on a flexible accelerator model is estimated for regions of the Russian Federation grouped into 30 macro-regions. The function revealed empirically whether the regions have endogenous growth mechanisms that are reflected in the presence of feedbacks and lag responses. For each of the 30 macro-regions four variants of the function were evaluated, differing in the interpretation of the expected demand. First, options were considered when investment dynamics is determined by changes in demand inside and outside of the region. Second, each of the options is represented as a statistically observable and unobservable variable. Estimates show that for most regions parameter estimates are within expected ranges of values, and the investment dynamics follow a flexible accelerator model. For the regions with statistically significant estimates the values of accelerator and the speed of adjustment parameter were calculated. Accelerator values are higher, and the adjustment parameter is lower for the northern and eastern regions, compared with the regions of the western and central part of the country. This indicates that the latter are closer to their dynamic equilibrium, when investments annually cover most of the gap between actual and desired levels of capital. However, regional patterns of endogenous growth could not be identified on the basis of the estimates obtained. There was no statistical confirmation of the assumption that the endogeneity of regional development depends on the degree of diversification of regional economic structure. Thus, investment processes in regions with similar industrial specialization and comparable per capita incomes do not always follow the flexible accelerator model. This may indicate the presence of other sources of growth, which can be more adequately described by traditional regional models, and this must be taken into account when implementing regional investment policy. Based on a comparison of estimates with regional indicators characterizing the ratio of base and non-base industries (using regional export base model terminology), it is assumed that endogenous growth mechanisms exist in regions where base industries dominate, but not in all regions where intraregional demand prevails over external one. For a more accurate identification of regional patterns of endogenous growth a more accurate specification of intraregional demand is needed

The article shows the contents of economic interaction of Russia and China, the dynamics and problems of economic relationship in trade and investment, and the problems of realization of joint projects. In 2017, the Russian-Chinese trade increased significantly by 20.8% (to 84 billion USD). China is the main trade partner of Russia, while Russia is the tenth largest trading partner of the PRC. The positive dynamics of external trade was affected by the growth of prices in raw materials market, recovery of the Russian economy, followed by strengthening of the ruble and growth of consumer activity, and the stable economic growth in the PRC. The main categories of Russian export to China are mineral fuel, oil and petroleum products, wood and wood products, agricultural commodities and food. The most imported group of goods from China is ‘machinery, equipment and transport’. The increase of Russian export was held back by the lack of knowledge on how to supply goods to the international market, insufficient support in finding foreign partners, product certification and intellectual property protection. In 2017, both countries moved from realizing large projects to ‘routine’ interactions. The total number of investment projects by Russian companies in China increased to 211. The volume of Russian direct investments to PRC remains insignificant. Chinese investments in Russian economy increased. The largest share of Chinese investments was mainly aimed at resource projects. The 200 billion USD in trade turnover between Russia and China can be achieved by 2020 if the stable rates of economic growth in both countries persist and limitations on Russian goods entering Chinese markets are removed. It is important to diversify trade nomenclature, develop transport and logistic infrastructure of both countries