Issue 2017 no4 contents:

The article concerns standards of economic analysis in antitrust cases based on the example of the case on concerted actions (article 11 of The Federal Law No. 135-FZ ‘‘On the Protection of Competition’’, which became enforced on 26 July, 2006). Using economic theory and quantitative analysis of the results of the auction, the article offers a methodological approach to the analysis of parallel behavior of participants of an auction. The development of new methodological approaches is necessary for the antitrust law enforcement when behavior of companies cannot be qualified as illegal per se. The analysis of the parallel behavior of participants of the auction consists of three main parts: the revelation of external factors that could have caused the parallel behavior of companies; the description of the companies’ motivation caused by these factors that could have led to the observed behavior; quantitative analysis of the probability of such motivation. According to the results, parallelism that was observed might have been not the consequence of collusion but have been caused by external economic factors. Based on the data of the results of the tender for the right to install advertising constructions in one of the Russian cities, using mathematical analysis, probability theory, game theory and mathematical statistics, it was shown how the existing market conditions could have led to the observed behavior of companies; and the probability of such behavior without collusion was estimated. The idea of the structure of economic analysis offered in this work can be employed in the wide range of antitrust cases on cartels and concerted actions.

The paper systematizes the main arguments «for» and «against» a multifunctional antimonopoly authority based on an analysis of foreign practices and identifies the main risks that may arise due to the choice in favor of the multifunctional model that was made in Russia.
In the case of OECD countries, it has been demonstrated that in recent years the trend towards multifunctional antitrust agencies has also prevailed in developed countries, but in a number of countries, on the contrary, there is a trend towards specialization. Given these findings, in Russia one can expect to see some positive consequences of expanding the functions of the FAS Russia, which arise from internalizing of the externalities that various economic policies have on competition, saving resources, the growth of competencies and the reputation strengthening of the agency. However, in order to achieve these effects it will be necessary to overcome a number of problems typical of multifunctional antimonopoly authorities: an insufficient exchange of information, an incorrect prioritization of tasks and a loss of focus on protecting competition, as well as a loss of independence due to the increase in the number of stakeholders.

The article examines the impact of active and passive labour market policies on the number of registered unemployment in Russia. The hypothesis is that active and passive policies implemented at the regional labour markets have a statistically significant effect on the number of registered unemployment. It was tested on the regional aggregated panel data from 2005 to 2014 using fixed-effect models. The models included characteristics of the population and its economic activity, the structure of the regional economies, years of external shocks, the size of unemployment benefits and the instruments of the active labour market policy, collected by the authors from 141 employment programs implemented in 76 regions of the Russian Federation. The sources of the data were official Rosstat publications, information from the websites of the authorities of the Russian Federation subjects and the open-accessed consultant systems. The estimated coefficients of regressions show a higher impact of the active labour market policies, implemented at the regional level, rather than the unemployment benefits established at the federal level, on the number of registered unemployment. The results of the research make us believe that the increase in the amount of unemployment benefits together with the reduction of their payments terms, as far as the further decentralization of the labour market policy with a special attention paid to the instruments, that increase flexibility of the labour market and competitiveness of the unemployed, will eventually contribute to convergence of the registered and real unemployment and enforce active and passive labour market policies.

This article provides a survey of a relatively new concept known as “management of cultural diversity”. The author outlines a definition of the concept in regards to the field of Public and Municipal administration. The concept of cultural diversity management is analyzed through its comparison with different political models such as “melting pot”, “multiculturalism”, and “interculturalism”. The article presents some key outcomes of the research realized in the project “New approaches and methods of ethnopolitical relations regulation on the territory of the largest urban agglomerations of Russia” and based on the concept in question. In particular, the article evaluates the new Russian National Policy Strategy and focuses on the comparison of Russian and foreign experience in preventing, regulating and managing ethnic conflicts. Sociological research on interethnic relations conducted in three Russian cities, namely Ufa, Perm and Rostov-on-Don, shifts the focus from detecting existing conflicts to analyzing the causes of the conflict non-emergence and resolution, as well as describing the mechanisms of interaction between different ethnic or local groups. Moreover, the city is seen as an object and subject of national policy.
The research shows that in the Post-Soviet era the importance of “vertical” conflicts to the federal centre confronting Russian republics has signifi cantly decreased, while that of “horizontal”, i.e. inter-group, conflicts has gradually increased. However, this new situation has not been fully reflected in theory and practice of governance. The present article is aimed to fill this gap, based on the results of the above-mentioned research, and provides some propositions in order to improve the methodological grounds of national policy.

This paper analyses the impact of governor’s tenure and his/her local ties on restriction of competition in the allocation of public procurement contracts. Basing on existing literature, we proposed that (1) tenure impact on competition in public procurement is nonlinear and (2) it depends on the governor’s pre-existing work experience in the region before he/she was elected/appointed. To test these hypotheses we employ contract-level data for the whole population of public contracts on road constructions in Russian regions during 2011–2014, and governor’s biographical information. The analysis showed that during the first two terms of a new governor in office, the procurement competition increases and then
starts to decrease. Such a non-linear effect is especially prominent for governors-outsiders – the ones without pre-existing local ties. At the same time, this effect is not observable for the governors who came from the regional elite. Moreover, previous work experience in the region leads to a higher procurement competition on average. We also showed that restriction of competition for governors-outsiders could not be explained by the increase of contract execution quality: execution delays the increase linearly and the probability of execution terminating is not decreasing with the increase of the governor’s tenure.

Government budget transparency, involvement of citizens in the processes of budget planning and control are considered by the authors as a tool aiming to improve the effectiveness of public finance management. The paper aims at solving the problem of creating an incentives system for public authorities which will result in increasing the budget transparency. The authors believe that at the moment the ranking of the budget transparency of Russian constituent entities is an effective tool for increasing the budget transparency at the regional level in Russia.
Such a ranking has been existing since 2013 when it was established. The article considers the main methodical specifics of the ranking and compares data with The World Open Budget Index (OBI) by the International Budget Partnership. The main results obtained during the ranking process are also presented. These results demonstrate the state of budget transparency of Russian regions, as well as the positive changes that have taken place during the ranking. The authors formulate both the problems to be solved at the present stage of work to increase the level of budget transparency at the regional level and suggest solutions.

Complete and reliable information is the most important condition for the adoption of competent management decisions and a condition for the effectiveness of public management. But often actual information can be provided only by specialized organizations, experts with special knowledge and necessary qualifications. The involvement of experts and expert organizations generates a set of issues related to their qualifications, a degree of reliability of the examinations results, etc. This article describes the reasons and cases in which external experts should be involved in the decision-making process in the field of state regulation. In the course of the analysis, practice of interaction between state structures and the expert community in the regulatory activities of the state was studied and basic criteria for the need for and adequacy of involving experts in regulatory activities of the state were outlined. Also various scenarios for regulating activities depending on the characteristics of the regulatory functions, some key trends and problems of interaction were determined and described. It turned out that the dialogue between public structures and the expert community is complicated by high costs of contracting and a signifi cant risk of opportunistic behavior of each side. As a result, an expedient decision seems to increase the responsibility of each of the parties for the quality of state decisions taken within the regulatory framework and to ensure wide involvement of representatives of civil society in the development of state regulatory policies.

The article studies factors influencing investment attractiveness of regions. The practical value of the work is in its empiric research which has been carried out. It allows to assess separately influence of material and non-material factors of a territory brand and to show which events carried out by regional and municipal authorities to promote territory are the most efficient to attract different groups of investors.
The research is based on open data selection in 83 regions of Russia for the period from 2010 till 2013 with the total of 332 records: region characteristics, both material and non-material attributes of territory brand, combined in independent variables by using factor analysis and the characteristics of investments attractiveness, have allowed forming four independent variables. Four regression models are evaluated by using two types of econometric models (with fi xed and random eff ects).
The analysis results of the models have shown that the inflow of foreign investments is practically not influenced by the non-material brand attributes, while the most valuable territory brand characteristic for this type of investment is the potential of labour market: the share of population with higher education, competence in English, skilled workforce. Non-material brand attributes are important to attract national investments. Among them the strongest attributes are territory promotion in mass-media, research and technological development as well as state events. The acquired results can be used by the federal, regional and municipal authorities while drawing the territory promotion strategies.

The main purpose of this study was to substantiate the strategic imperatives of managing environmental safety in the agricultural sector of economy. Analysis of the provision of strategic development of the agrarian sector at the national and international level has shown the need to create a fundamentally new system of regulatory and legal acts regulating environmental security in the agrarian sector. It is concluded that the current legislative base of Ukraine should be expanded by adopting and enforcing a single normative legal act that will serve as the doctrine of ecologically balanced development of rural areas and will allow implementing in practice a comprehensive approach to environmental protection in the agrosphere on the basis of complementary environmental requirements, established for the subjects of agricultural activities. Taking into account the main imperatives of the doctrine of ecologically balanced development of the agrarian sector, the strategy of environmental safety in the agrarian sector of the Ukrainian economy is justifi ed, which should become a reference point for state power and local self-government when developing state and regional programs for ensuring environmental security in the agrosphere.

The monograph dedicated to the modern problems of the theory and practice of legal administration in the economy, provides a brief description of the scientific and practical merits of the work.