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Assessment of the impact of innovative factors on economic growth of the Russian regions
The goal of the research is the verification of the hypothesis that an innovative economic growth has a considerable importance for the regions with a high development level and is less significant in the explanation of the growth in other regions. The government and public expenditures for R&D are concentrated in a small number of the leading regions and also in those which are located closer to the industrial border. The regions beyond the borders of these technology intensive centers depend as a rule on less technological forms of innovation and on the technology transfer. We determined the following factors which are important for the regional growth: human capital, infrastructure, labour market, innovation, agglomerations interactions and productivity. As the factors characterizing the innovations we use the number of the issued patents, internal expenditures for the R&D, expenditures for technological innovations, number of employees involved in the R&D, volume of innovative goods, works and services and innovative activity of organizations. The innovations can have a positive impact on the long term growth. The data were collected in 83 regions of Russia in 2005-2015. The model of a regression with a constant elasticity was used. In the case when the impact of the competitive environment factors on the regional economic growth is significant it is difficult to assess the importance of the innovations. The division of the regions into groups according to the GDP per capita allows us showing the significant factors of their innovative growth. From the point of view of a practical application it is obvious that the regions with the development of the regions lower than average GDP per capita are expected to develop due to the innovations. Such institutional factors like management, leadership, efficient use of the potential available in the region are expected to take into account the active role of the innovations for the working force. Using as an example the Russian regions we showed that the provision of an innovative economic growth has a considerable impact for the regions with the level of the development lower than average and is less important for the explanation of the growth in other regions.