Abstract

Studying the development problems of the Arctic and the Far East has always been relevant due to the specific nature of these territories. At the same time, the existing support tools do not always consider this specificity, which is why the effects of their use are minimal.

In this regard, the purpose of this study is to develop recommendations for improving the social and economic development policy tools for the Far Eastern and Arctic regions. This goal will be addressed within the framework of solving the following tasks:

systematization of existing development tools,

assessment of the economic and social effects of the measures applied,

producing recommendations for the development or exclusion of existing tools.

The study was conducted using the methods of content analysis, retrospective analysis, and classification. The sources of information included regulatory documents and strategic planning documents, scientific publications, analytical data, and official statistics.

As a result, a list of measures for the development of the regions of the Far East and the Arctic was produced, and areas that required improvement were identified. The key findings are as follows.

Most of the development tools are focused on stimulating economic growth and increasing investment appeal, rather than improving the demographic situation.

The measures taken fail to translate into the expected economic and social effects. The number of specific and individual instruments for stimulating the socio-economic development of the Far East and the Arctic is insignificant. Some of the instruments duplicate each other, which entails uncertainty when considering opportunities for capital investments, disorienting potential investors.

As recommendations, it is proposed to review the list of instruments towards greater social support, development of individual mechanisms, and unification of territorial development instruments with overlapping scopes.

Abstract

The relevance of the research undertaken at RANEPA in 2021 is due to the fact that it is devoted to identifying perspective specializations of Russian regions, the targeted federal support of which will ensure the maximum effect in the growth of GRP, labor productivity, innovation activity and export volumes in the regions. The specialized types of economic activity of the regions are the subject of the study. To achieve the goal of determining the existing and perspective development of regional specializations, the following tasks were solved: a review of foreign and domestic experience in development of regional specializations was conducted, the author's methodological approach was developed, a comprehensive assessment of the specializations of the regions of Russia was carried out, and measures of their targeted federal support were proposed. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that three localization indicators (products shipped, number of employees and investments in fixed assets in 173 economic activity types) were used together for the first time to identify the specializations of the regions (based on Rosstat data for 2017-2019). A comprehensive assessment of the prospects for the development of regional specializations includes defining their national and regional significance, labor productivity, innovation, and export activity, and considers their impact on the region’s development based on sectoral multipliers in terms of gross value added and the number of employees. Research methods include systemic analysis, factor analysis, statistical analysis of regional features of sectoral development, index method, etc. Using the proposed approach, the results of the evaluation of perspective specializations for 35 regions (for priority geostrategic regions and regions with individual development programs) were obtained, for which a set of sector-wide and specific measures of federal support was proposed. The application of the author’s approach is recommended for informational and methodological support and increasing the effectiveness of the state regional policy of Russia.