Development of Regional Commercial Banks in Digital Economy: Risks and Opportunities

The article is devoted to the analysis of the activity of regional commercial banks. The purpose of this article is to identify risks and prospects for the development of regional commercial banks in the digital economy. The author explores the concept of a regional bank, analyzes the peculiarities of the activities of regional banks in modern conditions of increasing banking competition. The article analyzes the state and trends of the development of the banking regional sector from the point of view of efficiency increase of their activities. It is shown that the number of regional banks is constantly declining, and a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation do not have any longer in the structure of their regional banking system banking credit organizations chartered in their territory as a legal entity. The authors concluded that the development of regional banks can be efficient only through the qualitative growth of each individual regional bank, since in quantitative terms this sector of the Russian banking systems will only decrease. As an example the activity of Rostov bank Tsent-Invest and the regional bank of the Republic of Tatarstan Ak Bars Bank are shown, which occupied certain niches in the Russian banking system and fully compete with foreign banks. To identify and assess the current risks of the activity of regional banks specific characteristics of the digital transformation of the banking industry are determined. As the main risks of development, the authors identified the following ones: risk of increased banking competition, on the one hand, and the risk of monopolization of the banking market, on the other; risk of underfunding of financial technologies; information risks and cyber risks; risks of insufficient financial literacy of consumers of banking products and services; risks of customer base reduction. As opportunities for the development of regional banks the use of remote banking services, allowing to attract new customers, expansion of participation in the state programs, emergence of opportunities for the introduction and development of new business models, in particular ESG-banking are identified. The Bank of Russia can provide certain support for the development of regional banks in the context of digital transformation and increasing banking competition by creating and developing nationwide banking infrastructure platforms.

Assessment of Stability Level of Functioning and Development of Business Entities Within the System of Industrial Parks

The need to study the development of business entities in the context of individual categories of industrial parks is connected with different concepts of their development and territorial expansion. The suggested methodological approach to assessment of sustainability level of the business firms functioning in the system of industrial parks includes the following main stages: grouping of industrial parks and the selection of representatives of the groups; rating assessment of stability level of firms functioning in the system of industrial parks; grouping of businesses by the level of sustainability. The technique was tested on data from 150 industrial parks. The results of the implementation of the suggested approach show that more vulnerable positions are typical of businesses operating as part of industrial parks as “greenfield” companies. At the same time, the highest proportion of businesses with a low stability level is typical of developing parks, which indicates the need to expand the range of incentives for these businesses. The most stable cluster of entrepreneurs is business entities of developing parks such as “brownfield” companies. Entrepreneurs operating within developed parks as “brownfield” firms are characterized by a satisfactory level of sustainability. The proportion of entrepreneurial structures with a low stability level remains quite high, which indicates the need to adapt the development strategy of business entities in the system of such structures. The results obtained made it possible to identify the most vulnerable groups to risks, business entities and can be used to form a strategy for their sustainable development in the system of industrial parks.

Transformation of Personnel Training for Rural Economy

Currently, a modern young specialist is expected to meet the market forming criteria for the selection in the agricultural labor market and have a risk-oriented thinking. It is necessary to upd ate the structure of the development of an effective mechanism for the training of highly qualified personnel on the basis of specialized universities in the region. The relevance of the topic of the study is explained by the fact that the agricultural labor market is experiencing a shortage of young highly qualified IT specialists in digital agriculture. This article raises the problem of personnel training that meets the modern requirements of dynamically developing agriculture in the conditions of digitalization of the country in the post-pandemic period. The purpose of the study is to analyze the tasks facing an agricultural university in training of young specialists for agriculture as a branch of the digital economy of Russia. The objectives of the article are to develop a model for partnerships and promotion of employment of young specialists in the post-pandemic economy in order to develop optimal variants for covering personnel deficit in the agriculture; to suggest measures on the regulation of the labor market for young specialists. The solution of the tasks se t in the article will allow training highly qualified young specialists with all the necessary competencies and capable of meeting the requirements of the modern agricultural labor market. The article discusses the concepts, the departmental program “Digital Agriculture”, the areas of training and additional training of young specialists in the agriculture. The implementation of modern goals facing agricultural universities will improve the algorithm for training highly qualified young specialists who would be able to meet all the selection criteria in the agricultural labor market.

Efficiency Assessment of Measures for Sustainable Development of the Region Under the Uncertainty of Coronavirus Crisis

The article presents efficiency assessment of sustainable development measures in the region in the face of uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic crisis caused by the pandemic is one of the most serious in recent decades. Its global nature is due to the scale of economic and social losses, aggravation of production problems for many industries and enterprises. Like other regions of the Russian Federation, Volgograd region has repeatedly faced crises since the early 2000s, and each of them has become a new challenge for the regional administration system in terms of its ability to develop and take timely measures to overcome negative consequences. In the article, a number of indicators were analyzed for three consequent periods. The first one is 2019 in comparison with 2018. The second period is 2020 in comparison with 2019. The third one is the beginning of 2021 and each of them is characterized by the ratio of various factors that influence the behavior of business entities, population of the region, development and use of managerial decisions aimed at sustainable social and economic development of Volgograd region. The recovery from the pandemic crisis became the most important task for regional authorities, which is reflected in the set of measures aimed at support of the economy and social sphere of the region, incomes of the population and businesses. It became necessary for public authorities to improve new rules of work and decision-making mechanisms in order to respond to the current situation in a timely manner. The authors believe that the main factors of success of the measures implemented by regional authorities were their quality, timeliness and degree of compliance with the set goals. Analysis and generalization of management experience during the corona virus crisis allowed us suggesting long-term measures aimed at the sustainable development of Volgograd region.

Decarbonization of the Economy – the General Trend of Development of Russia and Its Regions in the 21st Century

Today the issue of Russia’s low-carbon development and the necessity in cutting down Greenhouse emissions, first of all, carbon dioxide (СO2) is very acute. Over the recent years a lot of documents and regulatory legal acts have appeared in Russia, one way or another related to the decarbonization of the economy, including “National Climate Change Adaptation Plan”, the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation “On Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions”, “Strategy for the Long-Term Development of Russia with Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions up to 2050”, draft Federal Law “On State Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Removals”, “The Plan for the Development of Hydrogen Energy in Russia up to 2050”. Russia needs a network of carbon landfills, its own non-discriminatory system for measuring the balance of greenhouse gases, this is the most important factor of national security today. In the near future, the system of calculations will be worked out on the territory of seven regions: the Chechen Republic, the Krasnodar Krai, Kaliningrad, Sakhalin, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk and Tyumen Regions. Since 2020, a pilot project of a carbon landfill has been implemented in Kaluga Region, on lands located within the borders of the Ugra National Park. To finance these projects, it is necessary to attract funds from national projects, first of all, the NP “Clean Air”. Carbon farms are a complex of technologies that enable the absorption of greenhouse gases, and so far for Russia it is mainly forest rather than agricultural technologies. There are about 11 million square kilometers of forests in Russia, and this is a unique reservoir for absorbing CO2, so the 21st century is the century of Russia, which has every chance to become the most important player in the sequestration industry. It is fundamentally important for Russia to become a world leader and gain a high rate of carbon farms development throughout the country. However, there is an acute shortage of qualified personnel for this type of activity in the country, so one of the strategic tasks for Russian universities today is to train specialists for the new sequestration industry in the conditions of a new and inevitable reality – total decarbonization of the economy.

Farm Development in Tay Nguyen Economic Region: Specificity of Formation and Development

The development level of businesses and their competitiveness has a significant effect on the growth of an economic region. The improvement in comparative advantage for regional social and economic development will contribute to the strengthening and expanding possibilities for farm owners as well as to encouraging the authorities of the province to pay a special attention to an accelerated farm transformation in the agriculture of Tay Nguyen region. Farm economy development is considered to be an inevitable trend and its effectiveness does not rely too much on laws and market practice but on the understanding of the regional structure taking into account the demands and peculiarities of this economic agent. Using the methods of descriptive statistics and the analysis of secondary data, this paper is devoted to the analysis of the essence of farm economy of Tay Nguyen region. A special place has analysis of the theoretical basis of economic zones and the identification of comparative advantages of the region in farming development. The results of this empirical research aim to discover the specificity of formation and development of farm economy in the Tay Nguyen region nowadays.

Digitalization of Goal-Setting: From the Formation of a Target Plan to Creation of a Development Scenario

The growing dynamics of economic processes, uncertainty and complex interconnectedness of development goals require an early transfer of the process of strategic goal-setting of regional development into the format of digital models that would make it possible to recalculate the quantitative parameters of the strategy in case of any change in target guidelines, resource constraints and parameters of the external environment. This action would sufficiently increase the efficiency of the entire strategizing process. The most important tasks in this case are the development of an end-to-end methodology and the digitization of the processes of development of a consistent system of targets and their attainability assessment. The article attempts to document the solution of the tasks of goal-setting and forecasting and to provide users with digital tools to facilitate the passage of these stages in the process of strategic planning of regional development. An approach to achieving the statesd goals is suggested within the framework of problem solution of the best distribution of produced goods between accumulation and consumption. It is shown that the target indicators used in strategic planning should be divided into basic, supporting and derived ones. In this approach, target values should only be set for the basic indicators. As for the supporting indicators the target values should be calculated when solving the task of economic capacity development which is necessary and sufficient to ensure the target values of baseline indicators. The informational technology for the construction of regional development scenario is based on the SNA methodology and computable models of general equilibrium leading to the achievement of the goals set. The technology presents a system of digital models that provide a quantitative description of the results of strategic planning as a single process which starts from the target plan and ends by the development scenario. The core of the system of models is a digital model of the region (constituent entity of the Russian Federation), built within the class of computable general equilibrium models. The developed methods and tools will be useful for developers of regional strategies, since at the goal-setting stage they allow to balance strategic goals and avoid irreconcilable contradictions in the process of target setting.

Social Media As a Tool of Influence on Regional Audience of the Russian Media

In the context of competition between the traditional media among themselves and with new media, it is important to improve the methods of influence on the regional audience for the achievement of the goals and survival on media markets of federal entities of the Russian Federation. The study analyzes how effectively traditional media use all the opportunities provided by social networks, and suggests a way to improve media adaptation to new formats of interaction with regional audience. The article analyzes the approaches to the definition and distinctive characteristics of social networks in the social media system, describes the possibilities of social networks in the influence on the audience, identifies the specificity of social media impact on the regional audience in media communities. A content analysis of six media communities was carried out. An analysis of the effectiveness of their impact on the regional audience of the social network was also made. On the basis of the study, a model of effective impact on the regional audience of social networks in media communities is suggested. The model takes into account the content strategy, content list and picturing of posts, interaction with the audience, manipulation, community monetization, visual design and assessment of the community effectiveness. With the help of the proposed model of influence on the regional audience of Russian media, it is possible to improve qualitatively the indicators of the community. It is assumed that the described model will allow establishing friendly relations with the audience and increase the efficiency of achieving the commercial goals of publications through the monetization of the community. The suggested model can be used at the planning stage of creation of a new community, which is suitable for both regional publishing houses and is based on the preferences of the audience of the social network which is identified in the content analysis.

Development of an Information System for Monitoring Attractiveness of Municipalities in the Republic of Bashkortostan

At present, most regions of the Russian Federation are experiencing an increase in migration flows, which has a significant impact on the overall decline in population. At the same time most of them have already developed regional migration policies containing basic guidelines for migration regulation. One of such regions is the Republic of Bashkortostan, where in the recent period the number of active population taking part in both intraregional and external migration has increased significantly. At the same time, the spatial mobility of the population has an impact on the social and economic development of territories. These circumstances lead to increased attention on the part of regional authorities in state regulation improvement. In this connection, the main goal of the paper is to develop an information system for monitoring the attractiveness of municipalities of the Republic of Bashkortostan using geoinformation technologies. The conceptual model “Informational system of attractiveness monitoring of municipalities of the Republic of Bashkortostan” is presented during the research, in which units of visualization, parametric analysis and spatial scaling are described. An algorithm information system was also developed which describes its functionality, such as: assessment of the level of migration attractiveness of the territory, zoning the territory according to the level of migration attractiveness; editing and search of data; scenario prediction of the level of migration activity of the population (number of departures, number of arrivals, migration growth); visual representation of the direction of migration flows; reporting. With the help of this tool, the forecast of the level of attractiveness of the municipalities of the Republic of Bashkortostan is made taking into account the realization of the regional program “Complex development of monocities”. The information system for monitoring the attractiveness of municipalities of the Republic of Bashkortostan can serve as a scientific and methodological basis for state migration policy improvement. The information system for attractiveness monitoring of municipalities of the Republic of Bashkortostan can serve as a scientific and methodological basis for the improvement of state migration policy.

Specificity of Socio-Economic Processes in the Hungarian Microregion

The Kunhegyesi District is the most disadvantaged district in the Northern Great Plain Region of Hungary. The aim of this study, which serves as a basis for a social comparative analysis of the District’s settlements in the future, is to understand the demographic processes. Population in the District has been steadily decreasing since 2011 besides lower income levels, poorer health indicators and a higher proportion of premature mortality. Two out of three children are disadvantaged, while the vast majority of young people drops out of secondary school without any qualification. The higherthan-average proportion of Roma population alone does not explain worsening economic output, economic performance has nothing to do with ethnic origin. Reasons are rather to be found in the deterioration of social mobility of the past two decades. Similarly to areas with a higher proportion of Roma population, the District also undergoes an exodus of nonRoma, resulting in ghettoization, thereby further diminishing chances of social mobility. Thanks to social inclusion and recovery programs, as well as the commitment of local Roma stakeholders, promising changes are coming true with an increase in qualification and employment levels and a decrease in the number of disadvantaged children, question is whether development is sustainable in the long run, and also, whether the District has a potential to independently selfsustain social development.