The Material Well-being of Russians: Intergenerational Differentiation

The article is devoted to the problems of the material well-being of the Russian population. It presents the research results that continues the author's developments on the assessment of inequality in the distribution of the population by monetary income and housing provision. This study aimed to identify and analyse the inequality of material well-being in the aspect of intergenerational differentiation. The authors relied on the normative methodology for identifying material well-being based on the original system of social standards of monetary income and housing provision. The assessments based on data from the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS-HSE) (28th round, 2019). Data on the existing inequality in material well-being identified by social standards under three distribution models — one-criterion (monetary income, housing provision) and two-criterion (joint distribution according to the criteria of material well-being) — for three generations: youth, middle, and older generation. According to the results of the study, those who live in households with dependents (children, nonworking members of households) are the most vulnerable in terms of material well-being characteristics, and, on the contrary, those who live alone or from small households (2 people) are in the best position. At different “poles” of the material well-being are the young people living separately with children and the older generation — living alone or married couples. The results obtained in the course of the study can be used to increase the validity of social policy and develop targeted measures differentiated relative to different generations of Russians and their socio-demographic groups based on indicators of the actual distribution of material well-being — monetary income and/or housing provision.

Small Business in Russia Through the Prism of a National Project

The article presents the results of the implementation of the National Project “Small and Medium Business and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives” and federal projects included in it: “Improving the conditions for doing business”; “Expanding the access of small and medium-sized businesses to financial resources, including concessional financing”; “Acceleration of small and medium-sized businesses”; “Creation of a support system for farmers and the development of rural cooperation”; “Popularisation of Entrepreneurship”. We critically analysed the national project as a whole and assessed the newest situation of small and medium-sized businesses. Further, we carried out the analysis of the achievement of the leading indicators of the national project. Also, we considered the financing and the results of the achievement of indicators in the context of federal projects that are part of the national project for 2018-2020.We assessed the risks of non-fulfilment of the goals and objectives set in the projects. The article also examines the effectiveness and evaluates the effectiveness of state support measures for small and medium-sized businesses affected by the spread of coronavirus infection in 2020. Besides, we analysed the main changes in the regulatory legal framework within the framework of implementing the national project. The analysis of the updated structure and activities of the national project “Small and Medium Enterprises and Support for Individual Entrepreneurial Initiatives” has been carried out.

Financial Resources for the Growth of the Russian Economy

The article deals with the formation of financing mechanisms for the dynamic growth of the Russian economy, focused on ensuring the country's global economic and technological competitiveness in the long-term period. The transition to sustainable, dynamic development in modern Russian conditions is associated with implementing a deep structural and technological modernisation of the national economy. It should be focused on further improving the country's infrastructure and expanding the existing sectoral structure of the Russian economy based on advanced development of the production of modern machinery and equipment for a wide range of sectors of the national economy. One of the independent priority of structural modernisation is the accelerated development of technologies of a new technological order (NBIK technologies) and the creation of production facilities to produce new types of high-tech products to diversify exports and increase the global competitiveness of the Russian industry. The solution to this problem involves a significant increase in investment activity in the economy, at least by a third (at least 10 per cent of GDP). In the current conditions, the rise in investment activity should face several restrictions. First, with the weakness of the Russian national production of investment equipment, which can be overcome through imports, but most importantly, through the development of its own production of machinery and equipment in the national industry's structural modernisation. Second, the weakness of the national financial system, which is reflected in the lack of long-term savings and the low level of monetisation of the national economy. For overcoming this limitation, it is proposed to form a special investment circuit based on a targeted credit issue to finance investment projects. The conditions and limitations of using the target credit issue to finance economic growth are considered.

Analysis of the Development of the Transport System of Saint Petersburg

St. Petersburg is the fourth most populous city in Europe (after Moscow, Greater London and Greater Paris). Hundreds of thousands of people move daily within the urban agglomeration. Under these conditions, the effective functioning of the urban economy is impossible without a modern transport system capable of providing a solution to current and future problems of the urban economy. The work aims to analyse the effectiveness of the development of the transport system of St. Petersburg. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the main provisions of the most critical regulatory legal acts regulating the city's transport system's development, identify their advantages and disadvantages, and determine how effectively the activities outlined in them are being implemented in dynamics. The author's analysis of the two editions of the St. Petersburg transport system development program (the original edition of 2014 and the current edition of 2020) revealed negative trends, consisting of the deviation of the program indicators' actual value their planned values. Based on the results of the study, the author draws the following conclusions: when implementing the program for the development of the transport system of St. Petersburg, general principles of strategic management are not used, particularly, the effectiveness of program measures is not analysed, the reasons and factors that led to the deviation of planned indicators from the actual ones are not extended for a new period without any assessment of the results achieved; indicators of the transport system development program are constantly being adjusted downward; There is no unified management system for the development of transport infrastructure in the city, the program activities themselves are distributed among separate committees of the city administration, which harms the results of socio-economic development of the transport complex.

The Role of Endowments in Financial Markets: Key Trends in 1990-2020 in the USA (on the example of the US education sector)

This article describes the key trends in the development of endowments as institutional investors using the example of US educational endowments in 1990-2020. The paper also gives an overview of the world structure of endowments assets by regions and sectors. Although much research has been done on investment behaviour and return of endowments, there are not so many works analysing the long-term trends in the development of endowments. The study uses methods of systemic and comparative analysis and statistical methods. The article demonstrates an intensive growth of endowment assets during 1990-2000 and the following maturing market. Special attention is given to identifying and analysing changes in the structure and concentration levels of the endowment's market. The author suggests that the earlier model of many different-sized funds has changed to the model where significant funds dominate and concentrate most assets. The paper also explains the changes in the investment behaviour of endowments, including how the size of endowment influences the asset structure of funds' investment portfolios and return. The paper shows the growing role of state universities endowments, an increase in the regulatory burden. Also, it presents some forecast of key trends in the development of endowments in the long run.

Impact of Institutional Factors on the Technological Level in Metallurgy of Russian Federation

The article determines the influence of institutional factors on the characteristics of the technological development of Russian metallurgy. We proposed several institutional criteria following identified three samples— Russian multinational corporations, large companies operating in many regions of Russia, the remaining companies operating at the local level. We investigated these samples in the context of several technological criteria. The main ones are access to modern technologies, level of production capacities, interaction with educational organizations. The study shows that the division of companies metallurgical companies into three institutionally different groups is accompanied by their stratification also by their technological level. The first group significantly surpasses the second and third by the volume of financing of technological innovations, the level of interaction with educational institutions, the level of interaction with research institutes and access to high technology. The differences between the second and third groups are also strongly pronounced. The approach described in the article makes possible the determination of the technological limitations in the metallurgical industry associated with its institutional features and shaping public policy, which takes into account the sensitivity of qualitatively different groups of businesses to stimulating measures.

External Debt Problem in the European Union

The paper's relevance is substantiated by the fact that today a rapid growth of external debt of the most developed countries of the world (including European Union (EU) countries) is one of the most acute problems of the modern world economy and global finance. The paper aims to assess the degree of the external debt burden of various EU countries and evaluate the prospects of solving external debt problems in the EU. The article focuses on dynamics, composition, and specifics shaping the EU countries' external debt based on comparative, economic, statistical, and graphical analysis. Special attention we paid to the analysis of specifics of the EU countries' sovereign external debt composition connected with the acute problem of the rapid growth of public debt in general. The paper examines the ratio of public external and internal debt in various EU countries. It determines the EU particular countries where public external debt is shaping based on either cross-border or domestic model. The research results reveal a high degree of dependence of the EU economy on international debt finance. Gross external debt and sovereign external debt of the EU countries are still growing, and its distribution among various member states is very uneven. The structural imbalance of the EU countries' net external debt has also been revealed: the number of net borrowers is double that of net lenders. According to the basic external debt sustainability indicators, some EU countries are in a pretty tricky situation and entirely depend on the possibility of external debt refinancing.

Russian Economy Model: Post-industrial Society without Industrial Sector

The study's relevance is due to the gradual transition of different countries of the world to a post-industrial economy, in which the share of industrial employment is significantly reduced. However, this process is usually associated with high social costs and management mistakes. Russia is not a happy exception to this rule. The article aims to identify the pain points of the Russian labour market and the higher education system caused by the transition process. For this purpose, based on the data of Rosstat, we considered the phenomenon of the educational bubble in the university sphere in 1992-2008 and the reasons for its occurrence. By using Russian and international statistics, it was possible to justify the gap between the sphere of higher education in Russia and the real sector of the economy. The analysis of the macroeconomic (aggregated) sectoral structure of the Russian economy and the higher education system did not reveal the existing personnel imbalances in Russia. This task we achieved by combining an external view of the manufacturing industry (comparison with other countries) and an internal one (study of its human resources potential). The main conclusion is that Russia is rebuilding the employment structure in the direction of the post-industrial stage of development. Still, at the same time, it does not have adequate support in the form of effective agricultural and industrial sectors. Such a transitive model of economic evolution is extremely inefficient and is fraught with the transformation of the country into a kind of “civilized colony” of the world system. To prevent this negative scenario, it is necessary, on the one hand, the most aggressive borrowing by the Russian industry of new technologies (including robots), on the other — the restoration of extremely close ties between universities and enterprises of the real sector of the economy. The model of the reintegration of universities and enterprises is a promising direction for further research.

Managerial Thinking in a New Reality

The passing year 2020 has turned over a lot in society, economics and business, human behaviour and consciousness. Within a brief period, due to the pandemic situation, we found ourselves in a new reality. Still, we are trying to understand the changes that occurred and how to manage different processes effectively. But even more important is where all these processes will bring us. This very difficult period in human development took place in a completely different economy of impressions, information, knowledge and intelligence. In the framework of the large scale, overwhelming, and promising (however, somewhat controversial) Industry 4.0, we see the development and digital transformation that changed management and managerial thinking. The new fight for human consciousness has extended; methods and techniques of neuro-management, neuromarketing, and artificial intelligence are widely used. The consciousness became the object of influence and manipulation, the key topic in business and politics. This article focuses on several problems of a new quality of management thinking. It suggests and explains the essence and the necessity of hyper thinking as one of the most suitable and valuable approaches to understand and analyze the new contemporary reality and the ongoing processes and approach to education.

Appropriate Budgetary Policy for a Changing Economy

The XXI century's contemporary challenges and crises indicate that fiscal policy is an appropriate tool for countercyclical regulation, ensuring sustainable economic growth and social justice. In this regard, society's requirements for the quality of budgetary policy have changed, which has shifted the focus in setting goals and choosing tools for its implementation from the position of ensuring sustainable economic growth and the principles of fair distribution of income. The analysis allows us to conclude that to ensure the proper quality of budgetary policy, its goals and objectives must correspond to the strategic goals of developing public law education, and coordination of budgetary and monetary policy is necessary. To achieve the goals of justice, the author of the article propose to differentiate the instruments of inter-budgetary reallocation of funds depending on the level of debt sustainability of the regions and to use targeted grants to motivate the authorities of public law entities to ensure sustainable socio-economic development. The article shows that for improvement of the formation mechanism of state programs and national projects and budget efficiency growth, it is necessary to monitor the compliance of tax expenditures and budget subsidies with the target indicators of state programs.