Factors of Growth of Russian Regions: Adaptation to New Conditions
The article provides the results from analyzing the dynamics of production in the Russian regions between 2010 and 2016. The main hypothesis of the study is that the change in the Russian economic development model in 2014-2016 should have affected the economic situation in regions and activated the factors of economic dynamics that stayed passive before. We present a set of factors characterizing the initial conditions and objective region-to-region differences: the structure of the regional economic complex, features and limitations related to generating final demand, economic policy and institutional conditions. The research methodology is based on using the apparatus of extended production functions. We numerically assess the factors' contribution to the dynamics of GRP per capita for 2010-2015. The main factors that determined the regional economic growth in a stable upward momentum and under the economic crisis were national trends. This is also confirmed with the estimates of regional dynamics carried out by identifying structural changes. For the whole period under research, factors associated with agglomeration effects, the localization of extractive industries, agriculture, and the chemical industry turned out to be statistically significant. In 2013-2015, factors of domestic demand - investor and consumer demands - were becoming more important. At the same time, there was no fundamental change in the contribution of factors; in particular, the ones characterizing innovation activity in regions and small enterprise development did not appear to be statistically significant. We define which economic policy trends have the most impact on regional growth. They include stimulation of the investor and consumer demands; for the conditions of 2015, a key factor was a decline in the poverty headcount ratio.