Content №4 от 2006
Image as a Competitive Regional Resource
The authors offer their understanding about a “regional image” term. To form this understanding means to develop a regional identification, reflecting the regional peculiarities and resources. The authors also suggest their understanding of “a regional brand” and “a regional reputation” as well as their correlation with “a regional image”. The authors prove that at present the regional image can be regarded as a competitive resource to promote regions in markets.
Socio-Economic Issues of Agrarian Regions
The unprecedented transformation of Russian economy has changed the formal and informal socio-economic institutions. Especially strong crisis has ridden the regions, which do not comprise the industries or companies bringing large rental revenue. Normally, they are the agrarian regions such as the Kurganskaya Oblast (the Ural Federal District). The paper discusses the socio-economic problems of such regions. Acuteness of the problems could be explained by a low efficiency of agrarian enterprises, and the prospects of their development are connected with the new approaches to choosing their organizational structures as well as with the governmental impact on the formal and informal socio-economic institutions.
Russian Federal Districts: Peculiarities of Economic and Social Development
The article gives a comparative analysis of the economic development in Russian federal districts in 2001-2005. The reasons of the present high annual GRP growth in all large regions are shown by the authors as well as the factors causing the lower discrepancy in the regional economic growth and living standards. It is the authors’ opinion that, due to the favorable external economic situation at present, these could be the ground for the higher consumption with the rates twice as much as the domestic production, and could give an opportunity for regulating a steadily growing monetary flow of the Russian currency and therefore of the effective demand in regional markets. The article also gives a medium-range forecast showing that the current trends will remain and a long-range (up to 2020) forecast showing that if the present investment tendency remains, no positive changes in the development of the Eastern regions in Russia could be expected.
Macroeconomic Estimations in Siberian Development Strategy
The conclusions concerning the long-range prospects of the socio-economic development in Siberia are presented in the article. The author’s focus is to identify and analyze a system of the macroeconomic and interrelated parameters of the regional long-term (up to 2020) development. This research is complementary to those previously published and devoted to the Siberian Development Strategy scenarios. The article includes a technique to create the long-term regional development scenarios that can provide the consistent indicators to assess regional development.
Regional Policy in Russia: Choosing a New Model
The paper considers the recent changes concerning the governmental regulation in the regional development and regional policy in Russia. The author notes that many positive changes concerning the programming documents on regional development (such as the Development Strategies for macroregions and units of the Russian Federation), financial support for regional policies (national projects, conditional investment projects and etc.) and institutional structures (regional development agencies) can be observed. The article shows the correlation of these changes with the ongoing administrative reform, municipal reform and transition to budgeting the output. The author also analyses a Draft Law on Regional Policy and the Regional Socio-Economic Development Strategy Concept for the Russian Federation prepared by the Ministry of Regional Development of Russian Federation. Considering a “polarized development” concept as a ground for a new model of the regional policy in Russia, the author describes the strong and weak aspects of this concept and gives the proposals to improve it.
Economic Growth in the Far East: Favorable Conditions and Constrains
The article considers the macroeconomic restraints of economic growth in the Far East caused by a resource character of the economy in the region, and the trends in its economic development, such as the lower impact of the export on economic dynamics. The author considers the production conditions in the region as advantageous due to the developing mining sectors, and analyses the regional growth causing by an investment factor. It is also shown that, having no changes in the current proportions in regional production and governmental support, the relatively low rates of economic growth and strong differentiation in economic development between the Far East regions will remain.
Novosibirsk Oblast Development Strategy: Extreme Scenarios within Socio-Economic Development Strategy
The article discusses the preliminary long-range forecasts being made within the Long-term (up to 2025) Socio-economic Development Strategy for the Novosibirsk Oblast. The article includes the methodical instruments to create the extreme scenarios within a cone of the possible development trajectories for the Novosibirsk Oblast and to identify the criteria for choosing a key scenario. The authors also present their conclusions from the macroeconomic analysis and input-output balances if the accelerative or maximum development scenarios would be implemented.
The Agroindustrial Complex in Novosibirsk Oblast: Resources and Scenarios of Its Development
The research shows that if the trends, which determined the development of the Administrative Production Complex in the Novosibirsk Oblast over passed fifteen years, remain, for coming 7-10 years the agricultural and food productions will become 2.5-3 times less than the present level. To overcome these negative trends and to increase food production, the authors propose that the rural communities should be provided with the increasing resource supplies and new technologies as well as the higher wages. According to the authors’ calculations, the rural communities could annually receive an additional sum of 24 billon roubles through its redistribution from the mining sector. This amount of money will be sufficient to secure an extended reproduction of the material and technical basis in rural communities, to prevent and multiply land’s fertility and to increase wages in this sector to the average level in the Novosibirsk Oblast.
Social Functions of Confidence
The author analyses the social functions of confidence in context of the individual’s utility value, institute’s (corporation’s) or society’s utility value. For the problem of confidence includes a “confidence/no confidence” dilemma, the social functions are ambivalent, both constructive and destructive.
Outlining the Future of Rural Community in Siberia
Having the experience of many previous years in rural studies, the authors propose their own understanding about the Siberian communities’ future assuming a multifunctional character of rural communities and multiplicity in rural economy and way of life as well as considering an objective to develop human resources as priority. Three correlated issues are under study: is a rural territory homogeneous as a subject for strategic planning?; what is the object for strategic planning in rural communities?, and should the paradigm of strategic development be inevitably changed turning from a medium-range perspective to a long-range one?
Changes in Siberian Fuel Balance: Ecological and Economic Consequences
The paper considers the possible variants of economic losses caused by a man-caused impact of the coal-energy industry on the environment in the Eastern Russia for the period of time up to 2020 (such as: if negative trends in worsening the public environmental protection remain; or if the policy aimed at reducing a man-caused impact through applying the existed environmental protection technologies will be carried out; or if the pollution-free technologies are being introduced). The paper describes a methodological approach to a comparative analysis of applying the market instruments provided by the Kyoto’s Agreement (such as the quarters on gas emission or joint projects). The article includes a case-study on the analysis of applying several technologies of a prior methane degassing.
Building a Regional Business Community: Institutional Problems
The article considers how regional business relations are being established in context of the imperfect market institutes. In Russia, the market institutions are being built within the social contacts and relations structurized into business nets that allow the business units, which are under a “bureaucracy press”, to “survive” and even make their plans for at least the near future. Using the sociological and mathematical techniques, the author classifies the economic behavior of regional enterprises. 100 semi-formal interviews, given by the top-managers of enterprises in the Kareliya Republic, constitute an empirical base of the research. Basic criteria for given classification are the following: the interviewer’s assessment of the development strategy for his/her enterprise, the interviewer’s assessment of his/her relations with business partners and a structure of the enterprise’s assets.
Fixed Capital Investments: Siberian Federal District and Russia
The paper gives the analysis of the output, common and peculiar features in investment activity of the regions of the Siberian Federal District (SFD) over 1990-2004 in comparison with Russian regions. Using the SFD Regional Balances over 1999-2003, the author analyses the dynamics, regional and sectoral structure of the fixed capital investments, correlation between the regional and sectoral economic growth and investments. The paper assesses the investment potential through estimating a total amount of savings. In addition, the list of the SFD regions classified as “having abundant investments” or “having scarce investments” through comparing the accumulated total savings with accumulated investments is given in the paper.
Adequate Resources Provision of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline
The issues concerning the resources supply of the “Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean Oil-Pipeline Project” are discussed in the article. The authors prove that the future effective operation of the proposed oil-pipeline necessarily requires the creation of the Eastern Siberia Oil-and-Gas Complex. Moreover, the Geologic Research Program on the development of the hydrocarbonic resource deposits in Eastern Siberia and Yakutiya would secures a resource base for this Complex. There are more than 200 promising and licensed sites in the Southern Siberian Platform, and the schedule for their development has been made up. To increase the investment attractiveness of other by-way deposits in this territory, a set of geological explorations should be carried out at the expense of the federal budget. Our assessment of the economic effect of public investing the initial stages of developing such deposits has shown that these investments could be regarded as publicly profitable.
Completing the Amur-Yakytia Trunk-Railway Project: Economic Efficiency
The prospects of socio-economic development in the Sakha Repulic (Yakutia) are mainly related to the possible completion of the Amur-Yakutia Trunk-Railway Project and further operation of this trunk-railway. However, having calculated the economic efficiency of this construction according to the official guidelines on the railway construction efficiency, the author states that the implementation of this project will be inefficient because of a low freight traffic density and a stub track character of the trunk-railway. The author offers an approach to how calculate different variants of the potential efficiency of the Railway taking into account the network effects if it would be included into the United Yakutiyan Railway System.
Perspectives in Power Provision of Siberian Federal District
The article discusses the paradoxical situation in Siberia: while the region has a huge energy resource potential and is regarded as a major and perspective base of electric power supply being able to cover the needs of European Russia and country’s export, it may face a deficit of electric power in the near future. This may happen, as the authors see, because of the fact that, being carried away by reforming the power industry, the governing body of the industry has overestimated the potential facilities of Siberian power system and underestimated the growing demand for power as the regional economy develops. The paper assesses the potential growth of electric power sector in the Siberian Federal District due to the large investment projects proposed and being planned to be implemented up to 2010-2012 by public and private companies. The conclusion is that the energy facilities, which are planning to be put into operation according to the Power Industry Development Schedule, will be insufficient even if an energy saving regime in the region is highest possible.
Developing Regional Policy on Fuel Market: Dry Gas Fuel instead of Gasoline
Taking into account a possible substitution of natural gas for gasoline and diesel oil, the author considers different prospects in the development of the national and regional natural gas markets. The author also analyses the opportunity of alternative using natural gas instead of gasoline and shows a present situation in the market of dry gas fuel, its development trends and challenges. A comparative analysis of several regional markets and the issue of their monopolization are discussed in the paper as well. The author present his recommendations on the regional policy aimed at the development of these markets.
Socio-Economic Development in Northern Russia in New Economic and Political Context
The article considers an economic and social situation in Northern regions in the period of transition to a new geopolitical and economic space and market relations. The industrial output indices in 15 RF Northern regions in 1991-2004 are given in comparison with those of 1990th. The authors discuss the intergovernmental relations, for example those concerning the distribution of subsidies from the Financial Support Fund for Units of the Russian Federation to equalize budget adequacies of regions. The article includes comparative data on the living standard in Russia and Northern regions (the average incomes per capita and cost of living), which allow the authors to identify the Northern population groups who have the incomes lower than a minimal average Russian cost of living. Regional disparities in wages are also shown. The authors make recommendations on public policy concerning the development of Northern economy.
Traditional Aboriginal Economies in Market Economy: Russian Realities and World’s Experience
The traditional Aboriginal economies in Russia could appropriately develop in future if they manage to adapt to market relations. The article discusses the economic and structural instruments to prevent and further develop them (through federal and regional programs aimed at Aboriginal peoples, transfers, tax concessions, compensatory agreements, fundraising and institutional support). The author also discusses the values and gaps in these instruments and analyses the world’s experience in adjusting the traditional Aboriginal economies to market relations.
Opportunities for Sustainable Development in Depressed Northern Regions
Observing the world’s history, the cases when some regions become socio-economically degraded some day because of the limited effective resources are not rare. People usually abandoned such regions if the more favorable conditions had not been provided by the government. Such people’s behavior could be regarded as normal in the market environment. As for the Tuguro-Chumicansky Raion in the Khabarovk Kray populated mainly with indigenous peoples, we can state that there is no need in governmental support to keep the people from abandoning the place where they belonged to, because they don’t want to do so and ready to reduce their needs but not to abandon. They will live in poverty ruining themselves by drinking, hence approaching to the verge of extinction. Therefore, the objectives of the public support aimed at such communities are to solve social problems, especially and at first those concerning their survival. It will obviously take a long time to realize this new way of social development, but we will have to come it through in order to stabilize the situation.
