Abstract

Economic activity is distributed unevenly, following human resettlement, so that high-concentration zones (large cities urban agglomerations) are combined with uninhabited lands. The relevance of the work is due to the close attention of the scientific community and governments to regional development. Scientific novelty is associated with the generalization of the factors of regional development. The objective of the work was to analyze the key theoretical approaches and empirical studies of the regional development factors. The text describes the main models of regional growth, analyzes the role of basic determinants, with a separate chapter devoted to entrepreneurial capital. In the course of the work, the following findings andconclusions were obtained: studies of regional development are widely covered in the literature, with several dozen regional development theories currently distinguished; each theory characterizes various aspects of this process. The determinants of regional development can be subdivided into factors of the first nature (those of natural origin) and the second nature (those of anthropogenic origin). The prospects and further areas of the study include an econometric assessment of the regional development factors in Russia (such as human capital, institutional conditions, technological development, etc.) and identification of new factors (embeddedness of entrepreneurship, influence of digital technologies, etc.). The paper is based on the materials of research work carried out in accordance with the RANEPA State Assignment for 2021.