Vol 9, No 3 (2019)

Based on the data on addresses of real estate buyers, we assess the investment activity of residents of Russian regions and cities in the primary housing market of the Moscow capital region (MCR) compared to the activity of their labor migrations to the MCR. The objects of our analysis are 149 Russian cities and 80 remaining parts of regions. This enabled us to analyze the specifics of migration and investment behavior for the first time, taking into account differentiation between cities and rural areas, between size classes of cities, and between individual large cities. This enabled us to fill in the gap in assessing the mobility of inputs, i.e., capital and labor. A sharp contrast between settlements of different sizes was revealed in the nature of their interaction with the MCR agglomeration. The intensity of labor migration to the Moscow agglomeration is decreasing rapidly and monotonically with increasing settlement size. The activity of nonresident homebuyers, depending on the population of the city of their residence, varies nonmonotonically, reaching its highest level for cities with populations of 250 000–500 000 people for Moscow’s housing market and 100 000–500 000 people in Moscow oblast. Small towns and rural areas (except for the Khanty–Mansi and Yamalo–Nenets autonomous okrugs) are a source of labor for the Moscow agglomeration and show low investment activity in the capital’s housing market. Million-plus cities provide a negligible inflow of labor migrants and are characterized by moderate activity in the MCR housing market, close to the national average. Compared to the premium housing and labor market of the City of Moscow, investment and migration flows to Moscow oblast are shifted to smaller settlements and lower-income regions. The attraction of Moscow oblast rapidly decreases with distance, extending to first- and second-order neighbors, while Moscow’s influence is nationwide.

The article assesses trends in municipal solid waste (MSW) processing in Siberian regions. The weakness of the institutional environment in the MSW management sphere is demonstrated, which acts as a key factor hindering the development of modern forms of recycling. An integrated approach to scenario modeling of MSW management is proposed, which makes it possible to obtain estimates of the required capital investments in this sphere for Siberian regions. The authors demonstrate the high requirements on the profitability of sales of secondary material resources and the lack of incentives for investments to increase the level of MSW processing, which significantly limits the effectiveness of government measures to reform the industry.

The development of the food retail network in Russia began relatively recently. For 20 years, starting from the end of the 1990s, it has traveled the path from the first imperfect quasi-network structures to a modern mature stage, which is characterized by strengthened concentration and increased competition in the market. The paper considers the main trends in the transformation of its territorial structure at three levels: regions, large cities, and individual companies. The study is based on official statistics, aggregate data from leading network retailers, and materials from consulting agencies. The Russia’s socioeconomic heterogeneity and the catch-up nature of the development of domestic network trade have resulted in nonuniform coverage of the country’s territory with its services, as well as the uniqueness of the presented trade formats. In recent years, a limited group of regions has emerged in which the active development of the food retail network continues. In the rest of the country, it is proceeding much slower or is at the initial stage. Despite the fact that the differentiation of regions in the share of network trade in retail turnover continues to slowly decline, the gap between centers with different population sizes differing in the level and variety of available network retail services is becoming more and more noticeable.

The article considers spatial differences in the standard of living in the population on a regional scale within Belgorod oblast; along with other regions, this federal subject is exposed to federal reforms being implemented in the socioeconomic sphere. The study determines approaches to analyzing the standard of living (SOL) and establishes its main measures. Intraregional differentiation of the SOL components is investigated, extensively using GIS technologies. The component-based study has revealed that the extent of disproportions among municipalities is particularly large for social and socioeconomic indicators, representing a decline in the number of enterprises in the social sphere and the number of employed persons in countryside. Agroholdings were found to play a significant role in the change in SOL indicators and settlement pattern of the rural population. The outcome of the research is a typology of municipal and urban districts according to their level of socioeconomic development based on the synthetic SOL measure, which has brought to light extensive intraregional disproportions. It has been determined that the high level of development is specific to the regional center (Belgorod) alone.

The article examines the experience in conducting expert ethnological evaluations in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and assesses the effectiveness of this institution for protecting the rights of indigenous small-numbered peoples of the North (ISPN) during the implementation of large investment projects. For the first time, per capita estimates of compensation for damage to the ISPN community per 1 km of territory and water area withdrawn out of traditional economic activity have been determined. The authors compare the size of compensation with the annual income of community members, as well as the size of payments practiced in other regions. The shortcomings of expert ethnological evaluations are shown, and directions for their improvement are proposed. The necessity of expanding the list of ecosystem services is substantiated. It is concluded that, when assessing damage in the case of deteriorated conditions for traditional economic activity, a different approach is required: assessment of impact on community resilience.