The real-time monitoring and forecasting of unemployment in Russia and its regions as one of the mo s t i mpor t a nt i nd ic ator s of t he l a b or m a rket meet s nu merou s pr o bl em s . T he mo s t important of these problems are largely due to the difficulties in indicators modeling, which are under the influence of the variety of market and macroeconomic factors. Existing models of unemployment estimation, used in Russia and abroad, are based mainly on econometrics and time series’ analysis methods. But such approach doesn’t fully reflect the patterns of unemployment levels’ variability. This fact reduces the degree of validity and reliability of the results of the unemployment forecasts’ studies. The paper suggests characteristics, which serve as indicators of the Russian labor market as well as approaches and methods of their assessment, which make possible to increase their accuracy in the models of short-term unemployment forecasts.

The assessment of the situation with the food market, taking into the account macroeconomic factors, makes it possible to identify the basic development trends of the national food provision system. The article reveals the main factors, which determine the implementation of emerging trends. The most important among them is the regional differentiation in the level of socio-economic development and the imperfection of the management system of the resource potential of regional food provision systems. The factor s, affecting the development prospects of the national food market, include as well the level of land utilization and the dynamics of labour productivity in agriculture. On the basis of the identified reasons of the imperfection of the management system of the development of agro-food sector of regional economies, the author formulates the main directions for the implementing of a strategy for managing the development of regional food provision systems and increasing the resources of the food market.

Modern economy is characterized with the transition of society to the new principles of socio-economic relations. The shift of priorities in favour of the growth of material well-being forms the problem of attracting young, talented practitioners to scientific and pedagogical work in the universities. The focus is made not on the usefulness of activities for society, but on the greatest material returns for the employee. One can not say that such an approach is erroneous. On the contrary, market economy encourages the desire to increase incomes, competition and entrepreneurial activity. At the same time, under the conditions of formation of the modern Russian economy, there is a need to attract young, talented practitioners to scientific and pedagogical work in the universities.

Urban agglomeration is a special organizational form of the urban space. The article describes the concept of urban agglomeration, patterns of occurrence and the place of urban agglomerations within the system of urban settlements. The paper identifies the characteristics of the organization and the importance of agglomerations for the developing countries and regions, characterizes the composition and the quality of agglomerations in Russian, their problems and development prospects. The author considers the questions of expediency and ways of management of agglomerations’ development.

The legal framework of local self-government is based on the differentiation of c om p etencies bet we en l evel s of p ower and on t he co - or d i n ation of leg a l nor m s . I n accord a nc e with the current legislation, the establishing of the basic principles for the organization of local self-government regards to the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. The article highlights and analyzes the main stages of the development of the federal legislation on local self-government. The first stage proclaimed the local self-government in Russia. On the second stage, its fundamental principles were laid as a result of sharp discussions. The third stage is characterized with the tendency of strengthening the power vertical. Basing on the comparative analysis of federal laws on local self-government, the author traces the development of legal norms, the practice of their application and influence on establishing a power level, maximum close to the population.

In this article the author analyses «One belt - one road» initiative, which provides new opportunities for the globalization in the period of recession of the world economy and the decrease of the international trade. For the development of this initiative a group of scholars from the Institute of Finance «Chongyang» of the Chinese People’s University proposed a version of creating the net of pivot cities of different types not only within the territory of the PRC, but also abroad. In case of the realization of this initiative, Chinese economy will obtain new incentives for its development and the world economy will also speed up its growth rates at the expense of new infrastructure development along the route «One belt - one road».

More than two years of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) activities were aimed at the development of trade-economic relations of the member States of the given integration union, at the innovative development of the economies, increasing the volume and improving the structure of trade and investments. A notable position in the EEU trade turnover for many years occupies People’s Republic of China, an important trade partner of the EEU as a whole and of Russia, in particular. On the one hand, China’s share in the turnover of the EEU increases annually, the work is under way towards the implementation of the «Economic Belt of the Silk road» project and its cooperation with the EEU; are held negotiations with the aim to conclude trade and investment agreements. On the other hand, there is the possibility of strengthening the negative trends for the Russian economy in the situation of current economic and trade relations between EEU and China.

The analysis of changes in the dynamics of public funding of arts and culture in the Russian Federation over a 25-years period allows to conclude that the «residual principle» of the financial provision of the sector of culture in Russia has transformed into the principle of «low priority» of the public expenditure for culture. Within the above period there were three timeframes in the dynamics of public spending for the arts and culture: stage 1 (1991-2004) - the period of «return of missed opportunities», since only by 2004 it was possible to reach the 1991 level of public funding of culture; stage 2 (2004-2008) - the «golden five-year period» for the public financing of culture, the period of increasing public support of culture; stage 3 (2009-2015) - «funding of the achieved level» - a period of stagnation, when public expenditure on culture stopped to grow first in real and then in nominal terms.

The analysis of the main provisions of the federal budget and the forecast of the social and economic development of the Russian Federation for 2017 and the planning period of 2018-2019 allows to speak about a significant reduction of the impact of public finances over the development of the domestic economy both at the federal and regional levels. The balanced budget, minimization of the public debt and reduction of inflation remain the basic priorities of the state budgetary policy for the nearest three-years perspective. The modern budget concept of the budget is not aimed at creating the necessary conditions for increasing the rate of growth of the Russian economy, forming a series of threats to the socio-economic security of the country. The modern concept of the budget clearly ignores the sharpest for the domestic economy problem of the need to launch a set of mechanisms for the development of Russia’s domestic market - financial, organizational, legal, etc. The priority task of a new system of the strategic budgeting should be the financial and legal provision of domestic factors of economic growth. This is, above all, the stimulation of aggregate domestic demand through increased business investment and the provision of the population income growth.

Russian economy stayed in recession in 2016. The nominal growth of the Russian Federation consolidated budget revenues was so insignificant that it even could not compensate a rather low level of inflation. The structure of revenues of the consolidated budget and the budgets of the state social funds remained practically unchanged in comparison with the previous year. The main expenditure item for the Russian budget system is social policy. The largest drop in revenues and the greatest increase in the deficit are observed with the federal budget. This situation has occurred due to a decrease in oil and gas revenues. In general, all subfederal budgets managed to reduce sufficiently budget deficits via reducing various kinds of expenses. The growth of the revenues of the system of state social off-budget funds corresponded to the rate of inf lation and actually compen sated their inf lationar y depreciation.

The period of stagnation is going through not only the real sector of the economy but also through the banking system of the Russian Federation. Clients of the banking system are increasingly inclining to the savings behaviour model. The analysis of the dynamics of savings and loans shows a gradual reduction of the imbalances, accumulated in the banking system of the Russian Federation in the periods of excessive credit expansion. The elimination of deposit and credit i mbalances i n the reg ions and the implementation of the i n f lation t arget of the Ban k of Rus sia lay the sol id fou ndation for the f uture g row th of the Ru ssia n economy.

Currently, public-private partnership (PPP) is recognized by the state authorities in Russia and in other countries as the most effective way to create and to operate infrastructure facilities. Private business sector has evident advantages in terms of management flexibility and modern technology application. These advantages are widely used in the provision of public services on the basis of PPP. This approach can significantly reduce the burden on the state budget and share project risks between the partners.

In December 2015, Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation completed the matching procedures of the discussion of the concept of the bill on insurance of emergency situation risks in the housing insurance. However, during this discussion with the Bank of Russia and the All-Russian Insurers’ Union, Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation has to make changes in the above bil l. Since Januar y 2017, subsidiar y of the Bank of Russia - Rus sian National Reinsurance Company (R NRC) has beg un active implementation operations of the bill even before its actual adoption. The article considers the entire development process of the insurance of emergency situation risks in the housing insurance from the analysis of the situation in the Russian insurance market up to the evaluating the possible results of the RNRC operations.

The article analyzes the trends of key indicators of Russian population living standard from 2000 to 2015. The living standard estimates the economic aspect of the life quality of the population and serves as a criterion for selecting the directions and the priorities of economic and social policy of the state. This determines the need of considering the components of living standard level, basing on the official statistics data.

A new tend enc y of the g r adu a l t r a n sfor m at ion of t he s er v ic e s ec t or i nto t he m a i n d r i ver of t he econom ic g r ow th of C h i n a a p p e a re d i n 2 014-2 015. T hu s t he Ch i ne s e « c on su mer s o ciet y » moved to the next phase of its development, when on the background of the satisfaction of the demand for consumer goods, for an average Chinese began to grow the need for new services, including domestic and international tourism, The including of China into the list of countries with «middle-high income level» at the existing dynamics of GDP allows to forecast the decrease the share of the household budgets, directed to the satisfaction of the primary needs, with the corresponding growth of the share of expenditures for services.