Book
Handbook of Research on International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic
The Handbook of Research on International Collaboration, Economic Development, and Sustainability in the Arctic discusses the perspectives and major challenges of the investment collaboration and development and commercial use of trade routes in the Arctic. Featuring research on topics such as agricultural production, environmental resources, and investment collaboration, this book is ideally designed for policymakers, business leaders, and environmental researchers seeking coverage on new practices and solutions in the sphere of achieving sustainability in economic exploration of the Artic region
The main research objective of this chapter is to examine sustainable development strategies (SDSs) of urban centers of the Arctic Zone of Russia (AZRF). There are three specific purposes for this analysis: first, to evaluate the scope and focus of such strategies; second, to find out whether these strategies are efficient or not and whether they improve the situation in the particular city or not; third, to understand whether these policies are of short-term/single-issue character or they represent forward-looking/comprehensive strategies. The Arctic municipalities view building SDSs as an important policy priority for themselves. They have tried to create proper legal and institutional settings for the development and implementation of such strategies. They have made great strides in implementing some sustainabilityrelated projects over the last 10 to 15 years. There was a clear shift from survival/reactive to capacity-building/proactive SDSs. Despite some residual problems and shortcomings, AZRF cities’ SDSs evolve in a rather dynamic and positive way.
This chapter examines an emerging regional security system in the Arctic. There was a significant shift in the Arctic powers’ threat perceptions and security policies in the High North. In contrast with the Cold War era when the Arctic was a zone for the global confrontation between the USSR and the U.S./NATO, now this region is seen by international players as a platform for international cooperation.The Arctic countries now believe that there are no serious hard security threats to them and that the soft security agenda is much more important. The military power now has new functions, such as ascertaining coastal states’ sovereignty over their exclusive economic zones and continental shelves in the region; protecting the Arctic countries’ economic interests in the North, and performing some symbolic functions. The Arctic states believe that the regional cooperative agenda could include climate change mitigation, environmental protection, maritime safety, Arctic research, indigenous peoples, cross- and trans-border cooperative projects, culture, etc.
The first volume involves the Russian Federation as a common denominator with either Norway (oldest multilateral region in the Arctic) or the United States (sharing with Russia the longest maritime boundary in the world) to interpret changes with connected biophysical and socio-economic systems that underscore decisions across a “continuum of urgencies” from security to sustainability time scales. The second and third volumes will emerge from presentations during the annual Arctic Frontiers Conferences in Tromsø, Norway, starting in January 2020. Volume 2 will consider circumstances associated with areas beyond sovereign jurisdictions from Arctic and non-Arctic perspectives, recognizing the international community has unambiguous rights and responsibilities in the Arctic High Seas under the law of the sea. Volume 3 is intended to synthesize insights on a pan-Arctic scale, analogous to the world ocean across all sea zones, involving decisions to achieve ongoing progress with sustainability, coupling governance mechanisms and built infrastructure. Throughout this book series, which we expect to expand beyond the Arctic, science diplomacy will be applied as an international, interdisciplinary, and inclusive (holistic) process, facilitating informed decisionmaking to balance national interests and common interests for the benefit of all on Earth across generations. With holistic integration, this book series will reveal skills, methods, and theory of informed decisionmaking that will continue to evolve, contributing to balance, resilience, and stability that underlie progress with sustainability across our home planet.
This paper puts forth a comprehensive set of measures to address the current economic crisis, prevent its further aggravation and ensure sustained and ongoing development of the Russian economy. In this study we seek to adopt the viewpoint of common sense and keep free from political and ideological bias. This is why we believe the proposed solutions should be implemented by any reasonable government irrespective of its political coloration. This text presents our vision of the Russian economy and its problems.
The annual report prepared by a large group of Russian and French researchers. The report focuses on the trends of development of Russia in the sphere of economy, domestic and foreign policy, social and regional policy.
Despite the impressive economic growth in Russia between 1999 and 2007, there is a fear that Russia may suffer the Dutch disease, which predicts that a country with large natural resource rents may experience a de-industrialisation and a lower long term economic growth. In this paper we study if there are any symptoms of the Dutch disease in Russia. Using a variety of Rosstat publications and the CHELEM database, we analyse the trends in production, wages and employment in the Russian manufacturing industries, and we study the behaviour of Russian imports and exports. We find that, while Russia exhibits some symptoms of the Dutch disease, e.g. the real appreciation of the rouble, the rise in real wages, the decrease in employment in manufacturing industries and the development of the services sector, the manufacturing production nonetheless increased, contradicting the theory of the Dutch disease. These trends can be explained by the gains in productivity and the recovery after the disorganisation in the 1990s, by new market opportunities for Russian products in the European Union and in CIS countries, by a growing Chinese demand for some products and by a booming internal market. Finally, investments in many manufacturing industries were largely encouraged, whereas those in the energy sector were strongly regulated, which contributed to the economic diversification.
The paper considers the prospects of domestic pharmaceutical industry development and determines the requirements for strategic growth for the drug manufacturers. Particularly highlighted are the results of examining the present situation in the domestic pharmaceutical industry as well as the analysis of international experience. The author determines the main growth aims of the domestic pharmaceutical companies and suggests the measures aimed at their reaching.
Peculiarities of making of managerial decisions in modern business systems, predetermined by observation of the basic principles, are shown: constant monitoring of external environment for determining new possibilities and actual problems and determining the need for managerial decisions; founding on materials of marketing research, conduct of marketing communications for informing and supporting loyalty of interested parties in the process of implementation of decisions; and striving for increasing or at least preserving the uniqueness and effectiveness of business system during decision making (criterion of optimality of decisions).
The paper examines the structure, governance, and balance sheets of state-controlled banks in Russia, which accounted for over 55 percent of the total assets in the country's banking system in early 2012. The author offers a credible estimate of the size of the country's state banking sector by including banks that are indirectly owned by public organizations. Contrary to some predictions based on the theoretical literature on economic transition, he explains the relatively high profitability and efficiency of Russian state-controlled banks by pointing to their competitive position in such functions as acquisition and disposal of assets on behalf of the government. Also suggested in the paper is a different way of looking at market concentration in Russia (by consolidating the market shares of core state-controlled banks), which produces a picture of a more concentrated market than officially reported. Lastly, one of the author's interesting conclusions is that China provides a better benchmark than the formerly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe by which to assess the viability of state ownership of banks in Russia and to evaluate the country's banking sector.
The paper examines the principles for the supervision of financial conglomerates proposed by BCBS in the consultative document published in December 2011. Moreover, the article proposes a number of suggestions worked out by the authors within the HSE research team.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.