Economic Development Sustainability of Russia’s Territories
Technique for assessment of economic development sustainability of Russia’s regions is provided. Methodologically the technique is based on diagnosing the loss of sustainability in economic growth and assessing the degree of instability. The authors propose to assess the degree of sustainability by such measure, as variance in the economy’s growth rate, while the risks of instable growth — by an index, reflecting relative variance in economic growth rates. Economic growth sustainability and dynamics for several RF administrative territories are assessed, including Belgorod oblast, Bryansk oblast, Volgograd oblast, Pskov oblast, the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Republic of Dagestan and Krasnodar krai. The estimates are based on statistics for the 2000—2011 years period. As is found out, different territories has different periods of sustainable and unsustainable development as well as different degrees of economic growth instability. In terms of economic development Belgorod oblast, the city of St. Petersburg, Krasnodar krai and the Republic of Dagestan are stable as compared to the growth of the overall Russian economy. Such territories, as Bryansk oblast, Volgograd oblast, Pskov oblast and the city of Moscow show instability of economic development as compared to the Russian economy as a whole. As correlation and regression analysis shows, indices of economic development instability significantly affect investments in the regional economy. Based on a small sample of administrative territories the authors show that instability of economic development is responsible for 40 per cent reduction in investments. Thus the conclusion is made that economic development instability is a rather significant factor of the territory’s investment climate.