Inequality Kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19

The wealth of the world’s 10 richest men has doubled since the pandemic began. The incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off because of COVID-19. Widening economic, gender, and racial inequalities—as well as the inequality that exists between countries—are tearing our world apart. This is not by chance, but choice: “economic violence” is perpetrated when structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people. This causes direct harm to us all, and to the poorest people, women and girls, and racialized groups most. Inequality contributes to the death of at least one person every four seconds. But we can radically redesign our economies to be centered on equality. We can claw back extreme wealth through progressive taxation; invest in powerful, proven inequality-busting public measures; and boldly shift power in the economy and society. If we are courageous, and listen to the movements demanding change, we can create an economy in which nobody lives in poverty, nor with unimaginable billionaire wealth—in which inequality no longer kills.

Impact of the Coronacrisis on Germany's Transition to a Climate-neutral Economy

The author continues the study of the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the economic and political space of Germany. The second article outlines the features of the double transition ‒ energy and digital ‒ to a climate-neutral economy. Germany is carrying it out within the framework of the European Green Deal, the adoption of which almost coincided with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The coronavirus crisis has become a catalyst for the transformation processes in the field of energy and digitalization, many of which Berlin began to implement long before the onset of its consequences. Lockdowns have led to a reduction in industry's primary energy and electricity consumption, motivated businesses to relocate employees to home-based work, and accelerate the introduction of new digital technologies. The coronavirus crisis has become a challenge for government departments, healthcare institutions, secondary and higher education, which management and employees were not ready for a quick use of distance technologies. The author analyzes the structural policy of the coalition government, the contribution of German-French initiatives and projects to the implementation of the double transition in the field of energy, cloud technologies and artificial intelligence, assesses the role of a new Climate Protection Law

The development policy in the agricultural sector

The structural policy is enshrined in the modern legislation, including the legislation of the Republic of Bulgaria, as an essential element of the state policy in terms of its safeguarding functions. Being an internal structural element of state policy, in the quality of a larger-scale system, structural policy enters into relationships and interactions with a number of other systems functioning in economic and social life, tolerates their influence and reacts to this influence in different ways. The variation of the structural policy in the agrarian sector, as well as subsystems, reflects in their diversity the needs of the sector by conditions, including structural ones, in view of its sustainable development. Structural policies, transformed into spatial events and activities, in turn, can also qualify as a variety of agrarian policy or strands in agrarian policy, all the more so that the conduct of spatial planning activities on agricultural land has an important and essential place in the general and specialized structural legislation, including the agrarian legislation of the Republic of Bulgaria.

What Europe and the US could learn from the Covid Crisis

The European Economy is underperforming in the Covid Crisis, as it did in the Financial Crisis. If economic strength is measured by growth of GDP, Europe’s recovery in 2021 will be two percentage points below the loss in 2020, while the US will enjoy a net gain of 2 percentage points in these two crisis years. To the benefit of Europe, the paper finds that fatal causalities relative to population due to Covid were lower in Europe, and we therefore conclude that Europe chose a different tradeoff between economic and health goals. We report differences in fiscal and monetary response, but also in structural policy, governance and the political process in the two regions. Decisions in the US, once a problem has been recognized as important, are quicker; more resources can be shifted, even if the public debt is already very high. Finally, we screen performance for sustainability and life expectancy, which shows advantages for Europe that could be extended in the recovery programs.

Structural policy priorities: A regional dimension

Subject. This article develops an algorithm to identify priorities in the structural policy of regions and countries. Objectives. The article aims to develop and test a methodological approach to identifying the priorities of the structural policy of the Russian region. Methods. For the study, we used the k-means and geographical filtration methods. Results. The article proposes an approach to identifying the priorities of regional structural policy based on the benchmark methodology. Testing the approach in the Chelyabinsk Oblast helped define the priority areas of structural policy, which are the business environment, healthcare, innovation and technological readiness. The article offers certain recommendations to improve the situation in these areas. Conclusions. Identifying and ranking the problems of socio-economic development is important for the regional policy goal-setting, regional development strategy adjustments, and the design of a structural reform package.

Structural policy of large cities at the present stage of decentralization (on the example of Lvivska consolidated territorial community)

The present stage of decentralization in Ukraine is characterized by the activation of the processes of harmonization of economic development priorities in many newly established consolidated territorial communities (CTCs). In the first place, it is about the CTCs that were established around large cities after last year’s local elections. Traditionally, rural areas are rather skeptical about the possibility of complete realization of their interests within such CTCs. It causes numerous conflict situations. A range of CTCs established in the previous years even refuse to join new municipal CTCs. Often the refusal contradicts economic logic but meets the social support of the local population. For example, Lvivska CTC didn’t manage to consolidate a range of adjoining areas around it due to the unfriendly disposition of management of surrounding CTCs and their residents. Consequently, its spatial location turns out to be rather asymmetrical. The city’s boundaries literally “encounter” the neighboring village CTCs on the South and East. Moreover, some part of municipal infrastructural facilities turned out to be at their territory (supermarkets, trade centers, traffic intersections, and communal infrastructure facilities). To overcome the described problems and prevent conflict situations, it is reasonable to change approaches to the implementation of economic policy on the local level in the future. In the first place, modern approaches to the implementation of large cities’ structural policy should be introduced at the present decentralization stage. Because currently manufacturing prevails in the structure of these cities’ economy in Ukraine. Moreover, the foundations of industrial capacity of the municipal economy were formed back in the Soviet period. In the first place, it is about industrial regions of Eastern and Southern Ukraine. Yet, even in the West, namely in Lviv, most currently operating industrial enterprises were founded in the 1960s (some of them even in the 1940s). It is hardly real to transfer the production capacities of such enterprises to the neighboring rural areas. So, increasing the capacity of innovative production in adjoining rural areas should be the major priority of large cities’ structural policy at the present stage of decentralization.

Problems of improving the means of legal regulation agro-industrial complex in the context of ensuring food security of the Russian Federation

Purpose: The purpose of current work is to study the problems of legal regulation of issues related to efficient and rational land use, the search for sources of capital accumulation to ensure sustainable agricultural production. Design/methodology/approach: The methodological basis of the research was formed by general scientific and private scientific methods. Findings: One of the main tasks of any state is to ensure food security, since it is an integral part of the country's national security. In Russia, this aspect of security remains an important area of government policy and lawmaking. At the same time, the depressive state of the industry indicates the low efficiency of the means of legal regulation of the agro-industrial complex. Originality/value: The factor of state structural policy in agriculture determines the main directions of development and institutional parameters of agricultural producers through legislative and financial policies. At the same time, law-making policy is an instrument for carrying out structural policy in agriculture, both at the federal and regional levels, since the state adopts laws that determine the further existence and development of various categories of farms.