BUSINESS ENGINEERING IN CANADA AS A TOOL FOR ADAPTATION TO THE NEW REALITY UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF COVID-19

The aim of the work is to analyze the current mechanisms of adaptation of innovative processes in Canadian corporations in the context of COVID-19 by demonstrating technologies and approaches that can be applied to solve modern problems. The authors analyzed the statistical material, evaluated the changes in modern information technologies used to attract potential consumers. Methods of observation, analysis, generalization and interpretation of the results were used in the study. The analysis has shown that the Internet remains the most dynamically growing segment of the market for promoting products and services. It has been revealed that innovations can become the link in the company that will help it survive the crisis and open up opportunities for stating, analyzing and testing new processes. The results of the study strongly prove that the use of new technologies and openness to innovation can be a decisive factor for outperforming competitors in the future.

Development of a Methodology for Evaluating Cryptocurrencies as a Promising Means of Payment in the Digital Economy

The article presents the main results of a study of cryptocurrency as a financial instrument of the future from the standpoint of various methodological approaches aimed at identifying trends in its functioning within the framework of the theory and practice of monetary circulation. The fundamental hypothesis of the study is the prospect of introducing cryptocurrency as a legitimate means of payment to replace the classical forms of money in the context of the transformation of the world economy. This study and its results will contribute to solving a global scientific problem – the formation of a scientifically grounded theoretical and statistical base in the context of the specifics of cryptocurrency’s functioning and the possibility of its functioning as a legitimate means of payment in the modern economy. The relevance of the article is determined by the need to reassess the existing monetary system along with financial mechanisms and operating institutions in view of the emerging crisis of confidence in the current system of state regulation of the economy. The scientific novelty of the article is determined by the development of modern economic theory from the standpoint of the functioning of cryptocurrency as a component of monetary circulation via approaches that study cryptocurrency as an alternative to outdated financial mechanisms. This work opens up an opportunity for further research in the field of cryptocurrency relations, its further improvement and implementation in the national financial system.

Development of Cultural and Historical Tourism in the Regions of Russia (On the Example of the Siberian Federal District) and France (State Regulation): Features of Financial Support

The aim of the article is to show the history of preservation of cultural and historical heritage and the conditions for sustainable development of modern university cities on the example of university and other museums in Russia (mainly Siberia) and France. The main objective is to demonstrate the creation of harmonious campuses, in which economic, environmental and social principles are balanced, serving, among other things, to attract tourists, which at the same time contributes to the creation of new jobs. Using examples, it is considered how, with the help of coordinated actions of local authorities and university leadership, it is possible to resolve the eternal conflict between tourists and local residents. The development of regional museums and the formation of excursions for museum-educational-historical tourism of the Siberian region are analyzed. The analysis of digitization of museum exhibits and opening of access to collections to visitors from all over the world is shown. All this makes it possible to give museum lessons, to conduct toponymic excursions (scientists’ names of in street names), field games using local history and traditions, and to introduce elements of theatrical performances. The article shows how virtual tours are organized taking into account international examples. The economic role of museums, festivals, exhibitions in the life of the region is highlighted.

Work and Career Motivations of Modern Youth in Irkutsk Oblast

This article aims at understanding and analyzing the features of value-based attitudes to work and career motivations of modern youth in the context of the theory of generations. The principles of building and developing the career of the young generation in the conditions of labor market transformation as a result of technological and informational innovations are formulated. The article presents the results of a survey of senior graduate students of leading universities in Irkutsk Oblast. The survey shows the most preferred ways of employment and key factors in choosing a future job. The results of the study can be used by regional structures for interaction with young people to make managerial decisions, by employers interested in attracting and securing promising young employees, as well as by young specialists themselves when determining their labor motivations and career paths.

Improvement of Premium Banking Services: The Need and the Potential

The need for a transition to an intensive and innovative development path is overdue in the banking system of Russia. The quality parameters of the premium banking service program for top-5 banks were analyzed. Factors of interest to the banks and their clients were identified. Suggestions on possible ways to improve premium banking programs were formulated. For the analysis, the authors selected banks with the most interesting bonus programs. The contextual analysis of the qualitative parameters of the premium banking programs allowed identifying these programs’ important components and possible problems. These are: the digitalization of banking services, which actively penetrates the segment of the wealthy client; lower business margins; search for the real value of a premium service for the customer. In the authors’ opinion, the most urgent problem is the combination of trends in the digitalization of the banking services and the needs of individualization of the approach to servicing a premium client. The main directions for improving premium banking programs were formulated. They are associated with improving the skills of the program staff; searching for new additional offers and organizing operational feedback for this; expanding the line of financial products offered to premium customers, for example, investment and insurance products, legal services. Premium banking provides a premium client with a special status in terms of service individualization, involves working with target segments, and offers bonus programs of banking products and services aimed at specific target audiences. Therefore, premium banking encourages the bank to identify and differentiate different target groups (audiences) by income level, investment goals, etc.; to conduct events (training seminars, conferences, presentations) to attract individuals to the financial market. Premium banking provides a balance between the economic interests of the company, the financial market and the banking system, commercial banks and individuals. Therefore, the task of developing this segment of the banking services market becomes relevant, meeting the modern needs of the economy. Primarily, the introduction and improvement of premium banking are beneficial to commercial banks themselves, as it increases their level of competitiveness, contributes to the formation of customer loyalty, thus allowing for a more complete satisfaction of customer needs in special services. Currently, improvements in premium banking could also contribute to raising the financial awareness of private clients concerning investment opportunities in the financial markets that would provide effective and balanced development of the financial market of Russia.

The Russian Empire and the Countries of the African Continent: From the First Contacts to Regular Economic Interaction

The current state of the world economy is characterized by instability and mobility. In the context of a protracted crisis, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, competitive contradictions between the leading actors in international economic relations and world politics are exacerbating. Each of them is trying to fix the positions they have won in the world arena, resorting to the tools of economic and military diplomacy to achieve their strategic goals. The confrontation between old and new world leaders of the world economy is being transferred not only to traditional markets, but also to new ones, which were previously on the periphery of their economic interests. The African continent today, like in the nineteenth century, attracts more and more close attention of the leading states of the world. Rich in natural resources, it becomes an arena for the struggle for control over it from the United States, China, and European countries. Taking into account the fact that for Russia the field of foreign economic activity has significantly narrowed in recent years, its return to Africa should become one of the priorities of the national foreign economic strategy. In the above context, it seems relevant to comprehensively study the stages of development of economic relations between Russia and African countries and, based on historical experience, to identify the shortcomings and failures of economic policy in relations with African partners. When writing the article, the authors used general scientific research methods, primarily the dialectical method of cognition, the logical and historical method, deduction and induction, and mathematical methods. In the course of the study, the following results were achieved. (1) Based on the analysis of historical documents, the nature of the economic relations of the Russian Empire with African countries at various stages of their evolution has been determined. It has been established that, at the initial stage of interaction, Russia, in its desire to establish economic contacts with the states in the region, relied on the principle of respect for their sovereignty as independent states, independent subjects of international economic relations; however, at the following stage, associated with the beginning of the colonial division of Africa by the European powers, Russia was forced to passively participate in the colonial aggression against the countries of the region, entering into international agreements with the colonialists on the status of African countries. (2) Based on the processing of statistical data on the foreign trade of the Russian Empire with African countries and territories, a tendency has been revealed that characterizes the gradual curtailment of Russia’s economic activity in this region.

Macroeconomic Modeling of the Relationship Between Price and Industry Proportions

The article aims to examine one of the most interesting, in the authors’ opinion, applications of the two-sector model of social technology to identify the relationship between the trajectories of the relative price and the relative share of the product in the total output based on the concept of Pareto optimal, or “efficient”, trajectories of economic growth (i.e. trajectories, each point of which belongs to the surface of production opportunities). Within the framework of this concept, the ratio of prices of individual products corresponds to the marginal rates of these products’ substitution. The rates depend on the product (sectoral) structure of GDP, on the one hand, and on the available labor resources and production assets, on the other. The relationship between the investment component of the output and the growth of funds gives rise to a family of efficient trajectories, in the sense indicated above. Each of the trajectories is characterized by the joint dynamics of industry and price proportions; therefore, the main problem of the study is to examine the general properties of such trajectories. The main feature of the model under consideration is the nonlinear production functions of industries. Even the simplest Cobb–Douglas specification generates the dynamics of the main variables of the model described by a nonlinear differential equation of the second order, which cannot be integrated in general form. Therefore, the analysis of the properties of effective trajectories (at least when specific parameters of trajectories are of interest, and not just general criteria for existence and stability) required the development of a program of numerical experiments on a computer, designed for a fairly extensive test of hypotheses and the convenience of presenting and analyzing the results. To begin with, a variant of the twosector model was chosen, in the future it is planned to expand it to a significantly larger number of sectors. The properties of effective trajectories with constant parameters were analyzed: the marginal rate of product substitution (constant price ratio), constant marginal rate of resource substitution (constant ratio of factor payment rates), constant ratio of net output of industries, constant share of investments in GDP, etc. General conclusions are obtained about the conditions for the convergence of such “iso-trajectories” to trajectories with a constant GDP growth rate and about the characteristics of stationary trajectories. Of greatest interest, in the author’s opinion, is the conclusion that the existence and stability of stationary trajectories is determined by the intersectoral ratio of the elasticities of the output with respect to the funds of the sectors under consideration: for an industry producing investment products, this parameter should be of lesser importance. The derived equation, which can be interpreted as an expression of a trend that determines the form of the relationship between the proportions of industry outputs and prices in the economy, opens the way to a meaningful macroeconomic analysis of the relationships between these proportions, depending on the configuration of the parameters of social technology Ai, αi, aij, B and scenarios of their changes over time.

The Influence of Institutional Factors on Macroeconomic Dynamics (On the Example of the Russian Federation)

The article presents an original Keynesian-institutional approach to studying the macroeconomic dynamics of a transitional economy (on the example of Russia). The article proposes theoretical provisions related to the inclusion of an assessment of the institutional factor in the distribution of national income, as well as an authorial approach to modeling the relationship between institutions and aggregate demand based on the construction of linear regression equations, including changes in consumption, investment and institutional environment. Currently, economists have a desire to revise the mainstream and increase the requirements for the explanatory ability of macroeconomic models. The views widespread in economic theory are increasingly criticized due to the predominance of econometric analysis over qualitative interpretations, the unrealistic hypotheses of the rationality of economic agents’ behavior and the perfection of market mechanisms based on the assumption that it is possible to predict the future based on an analysis of the past. In order to solve the indicated problems, it is often proposed to use synthetic theories that combine the achievements of several schools of economic thought. One of these synthetic theories is Keynesian-institutional synthesis. The proposed approach is applied to assess the macroeconomic dynamics of the Russian economy, in which a decrease in consumption and investment volatility have been observed over the past five years, which is associated with macroeconomic stabilization and the development of social support institutions. However, the expectations of economic agents are rather unfavorable, and further measures are needed to stabilize aggregate demand. According to the analysis of official statistics, institutional factors significantly affect aggregate demand, but are not of priority. At the same time, the general conditions of the institutional environment have a stronger effect on investment than on consumption. On this basis, it has been concluded that the progress of institutions can not only accelerate economic growth, but also increase macroeconomic risks; therefore, it increases the responsibility of politicians for decisions in the field of economic regulation.

Classification of Technological Development Trends Based on the Analysis of US Patent Time Series. An Empirical Approach

The forecasting of development trends and the timely revealing of new technical (technological) fields are the key prerequisite for an effective development of modern economy. Only reliable results of technological analysis (forecast) allow identifying new technologies, understanding the evolution of entire industries, carrying out strategic investment planning at the state level, and also planning R&D correctly. The aim of this work is to justify one of the possible approaches to the classification of technical (technological) fields in terms of assessing their relevance, novelty and short-term prospects. This approach is based on patent analysis, in particular, on the study of the time series features of US invention patents (1976-2018) for more than seventy-three thousand main groups (subgroups) of the 17th edition of the International Patent Classification (IPC17). The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been selected as the primary source of information because it is one of the world’s largest and constantly updated patent resources, providing direct access to full-text descriptions. In the authors’ opinion, a feature analysis of the US patent issue dynamics at time intervals (1976-2015, 2009-2018 and 2016-2018) allows dividing the IPC groups (subgroups) into the following three main clusters: “unpromising”, “promising” and “breakthrough”. In terms of the timely revealing of new, previously unknown, technologies or solutions in the technical field, or of the steadily growing technological trends, the “breakthrough” and “promising” subgroups are of the greatest practical interest. The article presents the results of an empirical classification of 71,266 subgroups (with a non-zero number of the issued patents since 1976 to 2018) in eight sections of the IPC17. These data may be useful for developers, researchers and R&D planners in solving complex scientific and technical problems, as well as for making short-term forecast estimates of a specific technical (technological) field development.

Integration of Science and Education in Universities of the Regions: Multichannel Funding and Different Organization Models

Integration of science, higher education, innovative entrepreneurship contributes to the solution of topical problems caused by global challenges. The article shows that universities integrate scientific, educational, innovative activities both within their structural units and in cooperation with other participants in regional innovative systems. The aim is to identify the trends in multichannel funding of universities in the regions, which creates the conditions for the integration of educational and research activities, and summarize the experience of universities that have created strategic academic units (SAUs) as one of the forms of integrating science and higher education. Based on the statistical analysis of financial receipts to universities from various sources in 2015 and 2019 (form VPO_2), the trends and structure of the funding distribution by type of educational and research activities in the regions of the Russian Federation were compared. It has been revealed that educational activities dominate in universities, accounting for about 70% of all income, and research activities 12–13%. Regional cases of the universities (ITMO, NNU, TSU, NSU, SFU) were analyzed. They integrated science and education in the form of SAUs. The cases were prepared on the basis of a content analysis of roadmaps for the period 2016–2020, interviews, and other open information. The analysis has showed that the organizational model of each SAU is created on the basis of the uniqueness and competitiveness of the university’s scientific and educational specialization by mechanisms that ensure the integration of the educational process and research activities through the involvement of students, graduate students in research and innovative projects. It is concluded that the flexibility and versatility of training programs and research at the university in the SAU format is formed in cooperation with many participants in regional innovation systems, which leads to the demand for its services by enterprises in the regions of the European part of the country and Siberia. The synergy of educational, research and innovation activities is achieved within the framework of both one university and through its network interaction with other Russian and international universities, scientific organizations, and enterprises. The experience of creating SAUs can be used by regional administrations, corporations in the development of world-class scientific and educational centers within the framework of the Science national project and national research and flagship universities of the strategic academic leadership program.