Content №1 от 2021
Russian Regions and the Federal Center Against Global Threats: a Year of Fighting COVID-19
The article considers the preliminary results drawn and lessons learned from how the Russian federal center and regions counteract global threats. We point out the specific nature of Russia’s fight against COVID-19 that set it apart from a few other states, as well as delineate both adverse and favorable factors and conditions. This study shows that the Russian Federation, regardless of how grave the matter became, exhibited high resistance to the coronavirus crisis during the first COVID-19 wave. 2020 saw several growing trends toward decentralization in center-region relations. However, when decision-making powers were allocated to the regions, low-quality regional governance hindered their use. We take the context of jointly confronting global threats as a backdrop to show that Russia needs to find a compromise between “competitive" and “cooperative " sorts of federalism. The pandemic-related growth of the digital economy, remote working, telemedicine, etc., will magnify the digital divide among Russian regions, increasing asymmetry and competition. This situation will require unique forms of state regulation and public resources. The article concludes that none other than a dramatic knowledge economy breakthrough can ensure Russia’s future independence against similar global threats (along with the consolidation and strengthening of proactive and effective public administration practices at all levels: federal, regional, and local).
Yusupova A. T. yusupova@ieie.nsc.ru
Klistorin V. I. klistorin@mail.ru
Regional Budget Revenues: Structure and Incentives to Increase
The paper considers internal (local) and transfer revenues of regional budgets. The goal is to assess policies to raise budget revenues that are based on regional economic development or transfer mobilization and their appeal to the regions. By contrasting the revenue structures and volumes in 2012 and 2018 at comparable prices, we show that transferfunding had reduced for most Russian regions. We assume the condition for increasing transfer earnings to be the region’s economic success or the promise of such.
As far as internal revenues are concerned, the article demonstrates how weak the connection is between their dynamics and regional economic development. The growth of earnings from personal income tax is the only effect significant for the Russian region. State property remains valid as a revenue source only for a limited number of regions.
Currently, regions have almost no alternatives to growing their income base, which is also based on economic development. However, the low return on efforts leads to the region being less active at developing its economy. A solution to the problem should be sought in improving the relationship between the economy’s state and regional incomes in the form of incentive deductions from generated federal tax revenues.
Health Capital Estimates for Russian Regions in 2004-2018
The study aims to select a health capital indicator and provide health capital estimates at a regional level in Russia based on econometric modeling for 2004-2018. The article uses data from The Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. Relying on two specifications of ordinal logistic models and random effects panel logistic regressions, we find the socio-economic, demographic, behavioral and medical characteristics defining the health of the Russian population. The values for the self-reported health predicted from the regression models are used for the estimation of a health capital index for Russian men and women. We present health capital estimates for Russia and its eight macro-regions that reveal significant disparities in health capital among regions.
This article's results may provide more precise health capital estimates in meso- and macro-level models and add a social filter in economic endogenous growth models for Russian regions. The revealed regional disparities in health capital estimates also call for a differentiated regional health policy designed to mitigate inequality while maintaining state guarantees of free and universal healthcare.
Opportunities of Interaction Between Employers and Universities in the Ural Region
The article presents the results of a survey of students at a large Ural university to learn their opinion on factors making a company an employer of choice, interest in internships, criteria for choosing jobs, and potential forms of interaction with employers. The survey was conducted online among (n = 832) students of different faculties, courses, and modes of study at a regional university. When choosing a job, students are guided by wages, opportunities for professional self-actualization, availability of social guarantees, convenient working hours, the company’s ability to train and develop its employees. Most students look to gain work experience and do internships while also continuing their university studies. According to students, the ideal host company provides an experience that will undoubtedly be useful in work or employment. For students, internships are a valuable aspect of how universities and employers interact from the standpoint of future employment. They consider internships to be many things: work experience, a job related to their degree, and a way to get into the organization’s candidate pool. The most viable methods to gather data on internships are contacts with company employees, its website, judgment from teachers and university staff, and the Internet.
Research findings may be used to structure and shape fruitful interaction between universities and employers: one should take into account modern students’ pragmatism and practicality. It is necessary to tackle such formats as paid internships, offering jobs to the best interns or graduates, arranging conferences, seminars, and regular meetings. Understanding the mindsets of today’s students, companies will be able to consider the special qualities of their future employees and trainees when employing and on boarding.
Marital Status and Self-Disclosure in SNS Profile
With the advent of social network sites (SNS), the privacy problem has become much more pressing than before. Online platforms offer opportunities for sharing large amounts of personal information willingly, which might be attacked and abused. This circumstance fosters a need to study what affects disclosure in social media. Foreign researchers have noted that socio-demographic factors influence the amount and type of data published in the SNS profile, with the marital status being one such possible factor.
In this article, we study the marital status impact on self-disclosure in the VKontakte profile. We use content analysis as a research method to find out the information disclosure frequency in profiles of1333 randomly selected users. According to the results, marital status has a pronounced effect on how disclosed three out of 25 data types are. Married users are more likely to allow public access to Communities and Gifts, as well as the “Photos of me" album with their pictures tagged by other users. Unmarried or “actively searching" ones more often publish information declaring their identity and views (Personal priority, Important in others, Views on smoking, Views on alcohol, About me) and fill in their status.
Future research should also look at other factors that may affect self-disclosure in the SNS profile. The study results can contribute to making a comfortable online environment and may be used to develop recommendations on privacy protection in social media.
Game Theory and Expert System Technology Applied in Assessing the Public Efficiency of Large-Scale Regional-Transport Projects
The article shows how game theory and expert system technologies make it possible, using specially developed tools, to compare the public efficiency of large-scale projects in a situation of radical (non-stochastic) uncertainty within J. Kornai’s system paradigm. The proposed approach combines the ideas of the well-known methods PATTERN, cost-effectiveness, and Saaty AHP with some original authors’ solutions. The resulting software products serve as a means of support in complex investment decision-making. To exemplify their application, we provide experimental estimates for the comparative public efficiency of the Transpolar and Lena-Kamchatka railways.
Urban Spheres of Influence in the Far East: Current State and Development Prospects
Spatial development of the Far East is among Russia’s priorities. In this regard, identifying urban spheres of influence becomes essential for effective management decisions to coordinate the cities ’ and macroregion’s development processes. Due to very few adequate tools and technical challenges inherent in identifying urban spheres of influence, information on such spheres of urban influence is rarely used to draft strategic territorial planning documents. This study determines the spheres with principal component analysis, which provides a theoretical foundation for detecting influence areas between cities. As a result, we show the urban spheres of influence in their current state, observed in 82 cities in the Far East. Between cities in a macroregion, they are heterogeneous and differ in how much effect they have. Spheres of influence extend beyond their administrative boundaries only for six cities. Moreover, we have discovered regularities that need to be studied further, as the findings may contribute to the research on urban spheres of influence.
The Political Geography of the Russian Borderlands in a Globalized World: Theory, Challenges, Solutions
The article presents the authors’ view on the geopolitical processes cur¬rently ongoing in the Russian borderlands. The following issues are the focus for this study: maintaining the integrity of geographical space, ensuring trans¬boundary waters are used rationally, analyzing risks and threats tied to new international transport corridors, and assessing whether transit through Russia should be restricting under the new geopolitics. We leverage works of the past and contemporary geopolitical approaches to study domestic and international practices of forming transboundary spaces and solving the problems of cross-border cooperation. The article provides rationale for the discovered specifics of borderlands’ socio-economic development and environmental cooperation in the basins of the largest North Asian rivers. We pay particular attention to the historical and cultural cooperation between the neighboring states and preserving memory of the victory over Nazism in World War II. The study’s findings are applicable in the regional management of socio-econo¬mic processes and environmental resource management in borderlands.
How Indicators of Educational Institutions Contribute to Rating Positions of Cities and Urban Agglomerations and Reflect Their Competitiveness
We address this study in the context of a role that educational institutions play in increasing the competitiveness of a city or an urban agglomeration. One of the most relevant objectives for educational management is the need to define mechanisms that tie together the education sector with city/agglomeration competitiveness. In order to compare the said urban competitiveness, one can choose from a wide variety of city ratings available at both commercial and academic sources. A rating is usually composed of integral indicators being used to evaluate how educational institutions contribute to rating positions of cities and urban agglomerations.
We have performed a comparative analysis of the composition and weights of the said indicators. When any direct information on a rating methodology and/or indicator weights was absent, a correlation analysis was used to determine a degree of connection between the mentioned indicators and the rating position.
The results imply that we need to distinguish two rating types. The first type reflects the actual situation of a city/agglomeration. These ratings demonstrated a rather low weight of the indicator groups describing educational institutions to the ratings. If the information on indicators composition was accessible, the indicators describing higher education prevailed. The rating methodologies less frequently considered formalized institutions at other levels of education. The second type (identified via the said correlation analysis) reflects development prospects and increasing urban competitiveness. These demonstrate moderately strong and strong ties between a resulting city/agglomeration rank and a rank reflecting either functions or state of educational institutions.
Circular Business Models in Petroleum Industry
The article analyzes how circular business models take shape and establishes prospects for their application in the oil industry. Changing consumer preferences, emerging demand for new materials and energy sources, more severe environmental restrictions, and active global decarbonization processes all require respective threats and opportunities included in long-term corporate strategies, as is reflected in this study. We demonstrate that circular business models may help accomplish strategic management and operations control goals to boost competitiveness, lower negative environmental impact, and reduce carbon footprint. Finally, we see that switching to the closed-loop economy is not an exclusively corporate responsibility. The public nature protection policy should reflect the global environment and climate change trends. Thanks to this, the government needs to create new development opportunities for the circular economy while keeping companies motivated to introduce the best available technologies and continuously improve manufacturing efficiency in terms of environmental and energy conservation.
Systemic Capitalization of the Companies’ Assets as an Economic Incentive Tool to Increase Performance
The most significant indicator of financial management performance in enterprises is the coefficient of return on all liabilities, measured as the ratio of net profit to the average annual amount of liabilities (from a financial statement for a previous reporting period). At the same time, the calculation is carried out regardless of funding sources. This indicator reflects the efficiency of using financial resources represented in liabilities.
Another important indicator is the efficiency of using equity (or return on equity, ROE), net profit divided by the average annual shareholder’s equity. The ROE value is miscalculated here because, in this case, the definition of efficiency (the ratio of the effect to the costs that provide this effect) of using financial resources is violated. After all, all financial resources in the liabilities, irrespective of where the funds come from, are involved in generating income with certain profitability.
Therefore, all liabilities may be considered as investments that determines the capitalization process. We justify this provision by building an optimization model for enterprise planning. Net profit is attributed to equity (authorized capital, retained earnings, and other indicators), long-term credit, and current liabilities (debt and payables: wages, supplier debt, taxes, social insurance, and others). However, most of the capitalization effect is not accounted for by equity.
A new approach to enterprise management is established based on systemic asset capitalization, i.e. activities to incentivize companies and financial organizations’ performance with economic means as one of the areas for enterprise economy convergence.
