Idea and Ideals

In the proposed article a comparatively novel concept of megaregion has been offered in modern analytical discourse, i.e. by economic, socio-cultural and geopolitical dimensions. The megaregion has been interpreted as the combination or constellation of the regions, close to each other by territory and history, i.e. Space and Time. Different concepts of the megaregion have been observed, i.e. a) geographical and geopolitical determination b) megaurban actual trends c) socio-cultural diversification, consolidated in the “frame” of the megaregion. First of all, and mostly, the work is correlated with the exact enormous by its space and resources the megaregion Siberia, which, according to the world classification spreads from the Urals up to the Pacific Ocean. Conceptual analysis of any megaregion suggests it to be carried put by the temporal (historical) and special (geographical) squares and along three axes — economic, socio-cultural and geopolitical ones. Without doubt, it’s important to investigate organizational, governing and legal institutions in the context of the megaregion, but this ought to be the subject of the next article.

The main thesis of the article is that the concept of economic reality cannot be interpreted from the point of view of such a category as “matter”, although in the Marxist tradition this is exactly the case. This was associated with characteristic intention of Marx to direct transfer of the scientific picture of the world created by the earlier scientific forms of natural science into the area of economic and general social knowledge. However, as it is shown in the article, the scientific picture of the economic world is represented by the forms of culture that are fundamentally different from natural phenomena. For example, according to F.A. Hayek it is linked to the concept of "subjectivity", according to K. Popper's – with the “Third world”.

The report analyzes the period of development of Siberia since the beginning of «reorganization» (1985) till 2015. Demographic statistics is the basic element of the quantitative analysis in compari-son of the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and Post-Soviet periods of the development. The modern period (1985–2015) is described using a more developed system of the statistical indicators with sufficient (for assessment of trends) reliability and comparability. Certain conclusions, regarding both defining the modern situation and scenarios of further development of events, are drawn on the basis of the analysis of the dynamics of social and economic indicators, comparisons to the all-Russian trends and conceptual settings of the state control system.

Agricultural statistics data are analyzed through supplementary types of sources, which provide a critical look at the key statistical sources – agricultural census in 1916, 1917 and 1920. The cross-sectional analysis of statistics, record keeping and narrative material have enabled the author to conclude that the growth of agricultural production in Siberia during the World War I, as it is drawn from well-known statistical sources, can hardly be considered reliable, with the production growth still rising according to some indicators even during the Civil War.

The authors argue the need to develop a strategy for the country’s socio-economic break through, the formation of a new type of economic system - a knowledge-based economy. A qualitative characteristic of this type of economy in the form of a conceptual model is given in the article, and they also consider approaches to quantify the knowledge economy.

The article explains that the relevance of the topic is related to the need of developing youth entrepreneurship. Problems of development of entrepreneurship among young people are related to a number of reasons, including target settings, business motivation, support for authorities at all levels from the state to local governments, legal support, the attitude to entrepreneurship on the part of society, the attitude to the female and male entrepreneurship . Development of youth entrepreneurship can be analyzed from the perspective of endogenous and exogenous factors. Exogenous factors include government and legal support of business, the use of the financial system, the image of the entrepreneur in the mass consciousness. Endogenous factors include business-motivation and personal characteristics of young entrepreneurs. These factors have received empirical testing in the study of youth attitudes to business conducted on the total sample of Tomsk and Novosibirsk. Relevant for entrepreneurs is to obtain services from the state to realize their business project, as well as an information environment conducive to learning and sharing experiences in the field of entrepreneurship. The main problems of the youth of the Russian business are under-utilization of resources offered by the state, public attitudes towards entrepreneurs. Gender aspects are manifested in relation to the female and male entrepreneurship.

The socio-economic information published by the statistical and other authorities is a basic source of information available for a quantitative analysis and forecasting. To use this information correctly it is necessary to know the methodology, techniques applied to calculating indicators and data aggregation, as well as the methods for checking the results obtained. The paper discusses various methods allowing better assessments and more reliable conclusions such as: the verification of hypothesis on the other statistics, the use of alternative models for the same data set, the combination of different data analysis, including historical methods, artificial index computation etc. An important task in analytics and forecasting is to assess accuracy of the initial information, accumulation of errors occurred in data processing, and, therefore, accuracy of assessments obtained. The paper also discusses the issues of application of expert evaluation methods and qualitative characteristics processing techniques.

In explaining the causes of the acute economic crisis, which is Russia experiencing now; it is important to step aside from the widespread simplified opportunistic interpretations, connecting it to the events of recent times. The real causes of this crisis are determined by the fundamental phenomena in the history of Russia and the Russian economy of the last century. As the first reason the authors name a huge loss of human capital during the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. The second reason is a wrong way of reforming the Russian economy in the early 90's. The third reason is a long period of minimizing labor and intellectual efforts of all sectors of Soviet society in the period of stagnation, in contrast to their mobilization in the 30-60s years. As a result of these three causes Russia has currently produced, at least four "dwarves": government, society, business (to a lesser extent) and much of the economic science. The article provides several scenarios for the Russian economy in the situation when these “dwarves” influence all the processes occurring in the country. The conclusion is that the crisis of 2010, with the sharpest (in the last 25 years) foreign policy crisis, marks the end of an era of modern Russian history related to social and economic transformations of post-Soviet period, or even the entire post-Stalin period.

It is typical for innovative projects to be not profitable during the first stages of their implementation, as well as to carry high levels of risk because of high uncertainty degree in forecasted cash flows. In that situation standard methods of economic efficiency analysis do not allow to obtain proper evaluation of whether it is reasonable to make investments. The paper describes contemporary methods of such evaluation able to solve this problem. These are the real options method and the fuzzy-sets method. A critical analysis of foreign and Russian works is conducted. It is revealed that real options approach is quite widely used in foreign articles but is almost absent in the Russian ones, whereas a fuzzy-sets method is actively applied both abroad and in Russia. At the same time combined utilization of both methods is quite rare. Despite more accurate results in highly risky projects evaluations brought by the real options method comparing traditional approaches, it is also could be complemented with the fuzzy sets methods. It could allow to improve accuracy of innovative project evaluation made by a venture investor and to enhance the toolset available for him.

A Round table on regional and international studies was held as a part of the annual scientific session of the Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU) on 5 March 2015. The Round table brought together the lecturers engaged in the research of Russian society and the regional problems in the field of international relations. The Round table was attended by the lecturers of the Departments of International Relations and Regional Studies, Sociology, Social Work and Social Anthropology. The purpose of the Round table was to discuss the problems of regional studies in the field of theoretical research and applied research. The following issues and topics were discussed: the complexity and interdisciplinarity of regional research, strategies for construction of the Regional Studies subject, the specificity of regional studies and teaching of regional disciplines. In addition to the development of regional studies focused on international relations, comprehensive studies of Russia's regions that meet the needs of a specific region in the new regional modeling systems, implementation of innovative technologies, the examination of the activities of the various organizations, programmes and projects are becoming more noticeable. A number of Roundtable participants clearly showed that the driver of the emergence and development of scientific projects are the needs of the region addressed to "its" University. It was noted that the development of applied research, social forecasting and social diagnosis for the local community at the University is yet another challenge for University regional segment research.