BRICS Development Strategy – Priority Areas of Cooperation for Gaining a Foothold in a Multipolar World Order

The international world order has been changing rapidly since the turn of the twenty-first century. BRICS, as an economic association, that unites five countries, each of which is the leading state in its own region, is faced with a variety of modern-day challenges. The article examines the most important issues for BRICS, as well as the outcomes and potential future directions for deepening cooperation among the BRICS member states and in more extended formats. The main purpose of the article is to identify major trends and factors that influence the formation of the BRICS agenda and the future direction of development. Other important tasks that could be mentioned are determining the reasons for the intensification of political cooperation, obstacles and opportunities for BRICS institutionalization as an international organization and potential expansion. To become a stable international institution, BRICS needs to devise an effective strategy of development that includes key areas such as the economy, investment cooperation, digitalization, security, ecology, and the environment. The creation and strengthening of external relations of BRICS with leading developing countries and international organizations, as well as cooperation on the basis of equality, complementarity, and mutual benefit in the economic, scientific, and technical fields, taking into account the significant resource base of BRICS countries, the largest labor resources, capacious domestic markets, goals of economic modernization and high technologies, as well as food and energy safety will provide BRICS with the opportunity to form an effective development strategy to gain a foothold in the multipolar world order.

The Analysis and Comparison of the Comprehensive Index of the Development of China Urban Exhibition Industry

With the development of modern economy, exhibition industry has become an important platform for the construction of modern market system and open economic system. At present, there are many indicators to measure the competitiveness of urban exhibition industry in China. The annual index of competitiveness of Chinese city exhibition industry initiated by China convention and exhibition economic association has become the most authoritative report of competitiveness index of city exhibition industry. The exhibition industry is also one of the important evaluation criteria. This paper mainly uses the above two methods to calculate the exhibition competitiveness index of Chinese cities, and introduces the correlation coefficient to compare the stability of the ranking of the exhibition competitiveness index by the two methods. The study found that the correlation coefficient between the cities at the top and bottom of the ranking was large, that is, the ranking was relatively stable and barely changed. However, the ranking correlation coefficient of cities in the middle is smaller and the change is significant. However, the correlation coefficients of the cities ranked 21-40 are less than those of the top 20 cities, which also indicates that the abrupt change in the ranking of individual cities will affect the overall stability. Because of this, it shows that the evaluation indexes under different weights have a certain influence on the calculation of the comprehensive index of the city’s exhibition competitiveness, and the AHP method can better reflect the advantages and disadvantages of the city’s exhibition industry development.

Regionalism and Regional Politics of African States (on the Example of the Countries of the East African Community)

The subject of the study was the East African Commonwealth, an economic association that currently unites Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and Southern Sudan. Particular attention is paid to the integration processes in Africa in the post-colonial period, the doctrine of federalism in the political discourse of African countries, the causes of the crisis and the dissolution of the EAC in the seventies of the last century, as well as the economic and political reasons for reintegration of YOU. Special attention is paid to the evolution of the EAC from an economic alliance to a political one and the prospect of forming a federative state on the basis of the SAC. The author identifies the factors that led to the economic consolidation of the EAC, as well as those determinants of development of the commonwealth, which make it extremely difficult to form a unified federal state in East Africa. It is concluded that the further regionalization of the African continent and the realization of the federal project in East Africa will be hindered by such factors as the high level of conflict in the EAC member countries, tribalism, cultural, confessional and linguistic heterogeneity, and the ambition of leaders and political elites.

Formalisation of agricultural research

As an independent component of modern research in natural sciences, branch research developed as a result of the accumulation of knowledge from three spheres of public activity – agriculture, branch-specific education, and agricultural research – under the influence of a complex interaction of many external factors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the initial stage of formalization of agricultural research as a branch of natural sciences with the development of corresponding sign-symbolic systems and terminology. Based on the study of printed and archival research of the Imperial Free Economic Society (IFES), adjustments were made to the scientific periodization of the history of research as a branch of knowledge, considering the personalized contribution of its luminaries. Forgotten or little-known studies of pioneers of Ukrainian research – the IFES members: Swiss mathematician L. Euler; Russian scientist of Swedish origin, botanist and chemist E.G. Laxman; a native of Chernihiv Region, Professor of agriculture V. P. Prokopovich, and others were introduced into scientific discourse. The present paper analyses the areas of diverse research activities in agriculture, which were conducted by IFES figures at the early stages of the first scientific and economic association in the Russian Empire.

Horatio Alger

Raised in rural Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister, Horatio Alger Jr. (b. 1832–d. 1899) graduated from Harvard College in 1852 and from the Harvard Divinity School in 1860. Expelled from the Unitarian pulpit in Brewster, Massachusetts, after confessing to a charge of pederasty, Alger moved to New York in April 1866 to begin a career as a full-time writer of fiction for juvenile readers. He published a serialized version of Ragged Dick in 1867 and a revised and expanded book version of the novel, his only bestseller, in 1868. During his career he twice traveled to Europe (1860 and 1873) and to California (1877 and 1890); he was also active in the Harvard Club of New York. To supplement his income from writing, he tutored the children of several prominent Jewish families in New York, including E. R. A. Seligman (b. 1861–d. 1939), later a professor of political economy at Columbia University and a founder of the American Economic Association; Benjamin Cardozo (b. 1870–d. 1938), later an associate justice of the US Supreme Court; and Lewis Einstein (b. 1877–d. 1967), later a career diplomat. Alger was the author of dozens of essays, poems, and short stories, and 103 books for young readers, and toward the end of his career he estimated his total book sales at eight hundred thousand copies. Despite the persistent notion that his heroes rise “from rags to riches,” only a few of his characters earn fabulous wealth. His young heroes normally rise not to riches, but to a secure middle-class respectability. Beginning in the late 1870s, Alger’s juvenile stories came under fire from ministers and professional librarians for their alleged sensationalism. Of 145 libraries surveyed by the American Library Association in 1894, over a third proscribed Alger’s books. Alger died of congestive heart failure at his sister’s home in Natick, Massachusetts, in July 1899. Early in the new century, his popularity began to skyrocket. By 1910, cheap editions of his moral tracts were selling at the rate of about one million annually because, in their idealization of a preindustrial order, they appealed to a nostalgic desire to reform business through a return to principles of equal opportunity and fair trade. The phrase “Horatio Alger hero,” denoting an honest and successful entrepreneurial type, obtained popular if inflated currency in the language in the 1920s, with Alger’s popularity at its peak. Though Alger’s books largely lapsed from print during the Great Depression, the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Inc., cofounded by Norman Vincent Peale (b. 1898–d. 1993), inaugurated the annual Horatio Alger Awards in 1947.

Changes in Women's Representation in Economics: New Data from the AEA Papers and Proceedings

The shortage of women and historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in the economics profession has received considerable public attention in the past several years. The American Economic Association (AEA), the professional organization for economists, has been taking steps to address criticism that the economics discipline is unwelcoming to women and underrepresented minorities.

Information support of the eurasian integration: the image of the EAEU in the mainstream media of the member states

Mass media, as the main tool for information support of integration processes of any regional economic association, are designed to ensure the internal stability of the Eurasian Economic Union, without which it is impossible to strengthen its position on the international stage. In this article, through the analysis of news content of the mainstream broadcasters and print and online media of the member states, it was identified, which thematical components of the image of the Eurasian Economic Union, affecting the perception of the young regional association by population, and to what extent they are currently available to mass audience in Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The study showed that the information support of the Eurasian integration, unregulated for five years and transferred to the management of the media themselves, led to that the main topics as of Q4 2019 were: meetings of the leaders of the EAEU states, legislative regulation, as well as the prospects for the development of the relations between the Union countries. At the same time, the vast majority of materials are depersonalized information, rather than personalized materials that illustrate the benefits of integration for the public. All this leads to the formation of information apathy to the integration issues both in society and on the part of the journalists themselves.