One of the necessary conditions for sustainable development is the public finance stability. The policy of financial consolidation, which has been actively pursued since the 1980s, is designed to balance the budget and the debt burden so as not to expose future generations to the risk of lowering living standards. However, such a policy often becomes an obstacle to economic growth. In accordance with the concept of progressive financial consolidation, a fiscal capacity should be created, which is used to reduce the tax burden and increase budget expenditures that stimulate economic growth. Analysis of the tax burden showed that the policy of financial consolidation conducted in Russia in 2015–2018 did not stimulate the development of the sector oriented to the domestic market. Thus, fiscal policy did not meet the objectives of sustainable development.

The numerous development institutions created in Russia in general economic terms are not yet sufficiently effective. Now, not only serious work is needed to improve the legal and regulatory framework of their functioning, but also to develop practices for influencing strategic areas of the economy with their help. The problem of establishing the interaction of development institutions with each other is also acute. Against the background of dissatisfaction with the activities of the vast majority of artificially engineered Russian development institutions, it is very favorably allocated industrial parks. Industrial parks are, in fact, the natural development institutions, because, firstly, private capital is actively involved in their creation, and, secondly, the initiative to create parks itself comes from “bottom”, i.e. comes from business, municipal and regional authorities. An analysis of various sources of information (data from the Geoinformation System of Industrial Parks of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, the Association of Industrial Parks of Russia and the industrial real estate business company TBI Group) shows that in Russian regions there is interest in the creation of industrial parks from business and local authorities. Based on theanalysis of available data, the paper concludes that skillful support for the rising industry of industrial parks can be very effective in socio-economic terms, since at a relatively low budget costs the real sector of Russian regions can receive a strong development stimulus.

The growth of cargo transportation along the Northern Sea Route is hampered by a complex of technological, organizational and managerial problems, the solution of which requires the full attention of state bodies. In particular, the year-round operation of the NSR is extremely limited and in the winter period requires mandatory icebreaking support (according to climatologists, the navigation period free from ice only by 2040 will exceed 150 days). With an increase in freight traffic in the medium term, there may be a real shortage of icebreaking capacities and vessels of the Arctic class. A solution to the problem can be the creation of a separate Arctic fleet, which will transport between the extreme points of the NSR with subsequent overload. At the same time, there should be a clear understanding of the prospects for loading built ships with cargo and the corresponding reserves of domestic cargo, which potentially replace international volumes if necessary. It is important to emphasize that the existing infrastructure of the NSR is still limited (only one multifunctional deepwater port in Murmansk operates in the Russian Arctic), whereas for the transarctic navigation along the NSR, a system of deep-water ports with modern logistics and service as transport hubs is required. The attractiveness of the NSR is also reduced due to the acute shortage of realtime ice monitoring systems. At the same time, it should be understood that the growth of international transit, the subsequent construction of multifunctional ports with appropriate infrastructure and communications throughout the route will provide, in turn, a multiplier effect for other sectors of the economy, will require the involvement of new labor, which eliminates negative demographic trends in Arctic zone of the Russian Federation.

At present Russian Federation in a whole and most of its regions face the problem of justifying the social and economic policy, that ensures the shift from prolonged depopulation to the regime of expanded reproduction of the population. The proposed methodology for such a justification is based on the designing the econometric models, that describe the patterns of objective indicators of population’s natural movement intensity, depending on the main “material” factors, determining the characteristics of its demographic behavior (standard of living, health care expenditures, payments for children, etc.). As such indicators, it is proposed to use the marginal growth rate or its refined modifications, which are calculated only on the basis of sex-age-specific fertility and mortality rates and do not depend on changes in age structures. Such marginal indicators more reliably characterize the potential of self-reproduction of the population in comparison to the total and standardized fertility and mortality rates, commonly used in demography and corresponding to them population growth rates. The paper presents estimates of the marginal rates of natural movement of the Russian population in 1990—2017, which indicate, that the decline in the potential of demographic self-reproduction in the last decade of the 20th century in Russia was quite significant, and the rate of its recovery in the 21st century was not high enough, thus, as a consequence, by 2017 the country had not yet shifted to the regime of expanded reproduction, although in some of its regions such a regime had already been established in 2007—2012. The econometric model, presented in the work, reflecting the dependence of the marginal growth rate of Russian population on the standard of living and the expenditures on demographic policy measures, shows that the shift of the country as a whole to the regime of sustainable extended demographic self-reproduction is possible by 2025—2030, subject to a 2—3% annual increase in the levels of these factors.

In the face of increasing cross-country competition, the strategic role of higher education and science is steadily increasing. Russia largely copies Western standards in the field of science and education, having nothing to do with the development of these standards. As a result, the Russian Federation is on the periphery of the world intellectual development. The situation is exacerbated by changes in Russian higher education. In the 21st century, the higher education of Russia is characterized by the division of universities into federal and regional, which affects funding, the level of autonomy in the conduct of educational and scientific activities and other characteristics. The “nomenclature” approach to highereducation institutions of the Russian Federation turns many regional universities into noncompetitive. Probably, the lack of conditions for equal inter-university competition dramatically reduces the interest for private business investment in both federal and regional universities. The article analyzes, in application to the Russian Federation, three models of the development of modern higher education, common in the world. It is concluded that the numerous deformations of modern Russian society are transferred to higher education. Therefore, education reforms are impossible without major changes in society and without taking into account the fact that modern Russian universities reproduce the diversity of socio-economic relations.

The problems of the trade union movement are multidimensional and each state has its own characteristics related to the cultural and historical past of nations, traditions, ethnic composition of the population, level of economic development of the state, its territorial communities, etc. Along with the specific features of trade union organizations, theory and practice defined relatively well-established principles of forming trade unions and their tasks, which can be used in the further development of the state, including in today’s Russia. In this regard, the development of relations between trade unions and state structures of Siberia in the 1920s is of great importance. Twentieth century. It was at this time that new areas of work of trade union bodies associated with the development of the Soviet state system are growing and gaining strength. This includes the nomination by the trade unions of candidates for leadership, above all economic, positions and uncritical support by the trade unions of any proposals from managers of enterprises and the abandonment of the struggle for workers’ rights in state enterprises, etc. Thus, Russia began the process of merging trade union organizations with the Soviet state. The reluctance of the trade unions to draw a clear distinction between their duties and the role of the appendages of economic bodies in production had a painful effect on relations with the workers. Such a position of the trade unions separated them from the real needs and demands of the workers, caused frustration and apathy of the population towards the trade union movement.

As the population of the world continues to grow and living standards continue to improve, we must find an adequate solution for housing issues. The first part of this paper tries to shed more light on the drawbacks and the past anomalies of the world mortgage market. We observe different continents and try to point out the main causes behind the bottlenecks of mortgage markets. The reasons vary across countries but some similarities emerge, such as that in the initial period repayment places a huge financial burden on households.

The study of the formats of the international activities of the Russian parliament in the Asia-Pacific region (APR) is relevant as Russia is currently looking for ways to increase its international influence and expand the channels of interstate communications. The article evaluates bilateral inter-parliamentary ties between Russia and the leading regional powers — China and Japan. It concludes that Russia’s inter-parliamentary ties with these countries follow the foreign policy implemented by the executive. The article also analyzes Russia’s participation in regional inter-parliamentary institutions — the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly. Regular participation of Russian parliamentarians in inter-parliamentary organizations in the Asia-Pacific region expands country’s international political influence. However, organizations whose decisions are not binding, and the structure lacks permanent coordinating bodies, are less effective in addressing problems of global and regional development.

13  February  2019,  Dmitry  Medvedev,  Chairman  of  the  Government  of  the  Russian Federation, approved the “Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the Period up to 2025”. This document is undoubtedly a significant milestone in the formation of the state regional policy. However, its practical significance caused reasonable doubts among experts. First of all, attention was drawn to the basic term of “spatial development”. How does it differ from the “regional development policy”, the principles main goals and mechanisms of which have not yet defined? May the substitution of the concepts be a way of avoiding this fundamentally important task? They caused questions and uncertainty of the role of regions in the Russian Federation in ensuring the spatial development of the economy. Their place in this process is not specified. The Strategy actually did not take into account the differences of the Russian regions in terms of their socio-economic development and innovative potential. The overall conclusion of a significant part of the expert community was reduced to the need for: substantial refinement of the Strategy; concretization of its basic provisions; developing mechanisms to enhance the role the Russian regions in this process, taking into account differences in their levels of development and socio-economic potential. An attempt to demonstrate the significance of these differences was undertaken in this study, the results of which are summarized in this article.

Recent practice clearly shows that the implementation of the Strategy of spatial development as the basis of the state regional policy faces significant difficulties. One of these problems, significantly reducing the effectiveness of regional development policy is the lack of methodological approaches to the implementation of this policy on a targeted basis, taking into account the specifics of different groups of the subjects of the Federation. The article, basing on the authors’ methods of building a regional index of economic development and ranking of the subjects of the Russian Federation, undertakes an attempt to identify specific groups of regions of the country as the objects of the federal policy of regional development and the regulation of the spatial structure of the country’s economy. The authors formulate and evaluate in dynamic the basic “economic development potentials” of the regions of Russia. On this basis the authors identify — as a whole and in the context of separate groups of regions — the main factors and patterns, which ensure the steady growth of the regional link of the Russian economy. Taking into account the revealed patterns, the paper defines the possibilities of targeted addressing of various institutes and instruments of the federal policy of regional development in relation to specific groups of regions in the course of their ranking according to the authors’ methodology.

In conditions of regional segment development of procurement contract system monitoring of procurement process and digitalization of the efficiency of each single customer as an element of a holistic system become very relevant. Complex method of Russian subjects’ state customers’ procurement activity evaluation allows to form mechanism reliable management decision making of procurement process enhancement and leveling of difficulties arose at different stages of the state needs meeting. In the Voronezh region procurement monitoring is carried out through the state customers’ procurement activity rating evaluation system which has proven its effectiveness during several years and included in the advanced practices registry of legislation implementation in procurement area of Guild of domestic customers and procurement and sales specialists.

There has been an increase of the RF subjects consolidated budgets revenues in the first quarter of 2019. It takes place together with the slowdown in economic growth. The basis of this budget revenue growth was formed by corporate income tax receipts (results of final calculations of previous year), personal income tax and excise. In contrast to the Federal budget, the subjects of the Russian Federation used most of the revenue growth to increase  funding at the beginning of the year. Тhus, in the first quarter of the year, the priorities for the consolidated budgets of the subjects of the Russian Federation were education, social policy and housing and communal services. At the same time, the volume of investments in fixed capital at the expense of regional budgets has significantly decreased, largely determining the overall dynamics of this indicator. The problem of budget deficits remains for several Russian regions despite the positive dynamics of revenues. It requires restraining the growth of key budget expenditures.

For the Russian labor market, the problem of legal regulation of alternative forms of employment is quite acute. Non-standard forms of employment existed before, but today, thanks to the development of Internet technologies and mobile communications, they have become widespread. There is a significant increase in non-standard employment, which is associated with increased competition, unemployment, the development of new technologies, and the growth of demographic groups that prefer flexible employment (students, people of creative professions). Therefore, a detailed study of this sphere, ways of taking into account the forms and types of such employment, issues of providing employees with proper rights and guarantees is required. The author analyzed the innovations in the legislation in the sphere of control over the self-employed. On this basis, some of the disadvantages and advantages of the mechanisms of legal regulation of alternatively employed workers have been identified. Identified the main reasons that impede the control of this group of employed citizens.