Regional Policy Instruments Research Articles

Small business in Russia: institutions, market potential, taxes and digitalization

ABSTRACT In this paper we use an institutional approach and apply a regional perspective to explore how market potential, formal institutions, taxes, access to finance, regional policy instruments, and digitalization have affected small business activity in 83 Russian regions during 2008–2018. We use various regional data sources and official statistics to study the effects of regional business environments on entrepreneurship. Our results suggest that Russia’s business environment, including policy measures in taxation, is important in explaining small business activity, however digital transformation and the role of market potential can be better controlled by entrepreneurs in terms of what skills to learn and where to locate their businesses. In addition, we discuss the effect of exogenous shocks and changes in the business environment, along with dynamics, challenges, and perspectives of entrepreneurship in Russia.

Policy options to regulate timber and agricultural supply-chains for legality and sustainability: The case of the EU and Brazil

The need for further ambitious global action to reverse the trend of tropical deforestation and forest degradation and associated human rights concerns is evident. A range of transnational and European Union (EU) regulatory trade policy instruments and market governance mechanisms have been established to achieve these goals. However, illegal timber and forest-risk agricultural commodities continue to be traded internationally. Both the EU and Brazil are part of the problem but can also offer solutions to mitigate the risks of trading illegal timber and forest-risk agricultural commodities. In this paper, we review the main transnational issues at stake and assess under which conditions EU forest-related trade instruments coupled with domestic actions in Brazil can effectively curb illegal and unsustainable commodity production and associated international trade. Shortcomings in the mechanisms for identifying illegality in production, trade, and consumption are identified and possible solutions suggested. Heated political disputes, insufficient political will for transformative changes to tackle negative socio-environmental externalities associated with global commodity trade, and the still non-effective use of available regulatory policies and market mechanisms contribute to international trade practices still far from achieving desired and internationally recognized legality and sustainability standards. Following the assumption that international governance mechanisms of commodity trade between the EU and Brazil may play a relevant role in stimulating positive shifts, we conclude how the existing and emerging possible policy options can be combined through a mix of policy instruments to ensure legal and sustainable production and trade practices that could effectively support the protection and sustainable management of tropical rainforests.

Post-RFS supports for cellulosic ethanol: Evaluation of economic and environmental impacts of alternative policies

Cellulosic ethanol is a sustainable and low-emission transportation fuel, but production has been low in the past years. Existing policies, including the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and producers’ tax credit, have been driving the market for cellulosic ethanol. But they are expected to expire at the end of 2022 and their efficacy is compromised by multiple waivers and exemptions. This study models potential regulatory and financial policy instruments and evaluates their cost-effectiveness in supporting cellulosic ethanol in the post-RFS era using the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), a hybrid computational general equilibrium model of the U.S. energy market. The analysis suggests that the high volumetric mandate and financial subsidy will increase cellulosic ethanol production from 20.78 million liters (ML) to 57.84–65.94 ML in 2050. When policies are bundled, they will boost production reaching 63.29–65.94 ML more quickly than a singular policy. Finally, cost-benefit analysis and sensitivity analysis were employed to study the tradeoff of economic cost and environmental benefits of the policies. The result finds that the high mandate scenario has the greatest net benefit, which is more cost-effective than other policy instruments.

Approaching the Study of Corruption and Natural Resources through Qualitative System Dynamics

The complexity and scale of the challenges posed by the climate crisis demand knowledge sharing and collaboration between a variety of academic disciplines to address them. In that regard, the way in which natural resources are used matters, and more information is needed on which regulatory framework and policy instruments foster their sustainable management. There is consensus that corruption can seriously obstruct social, economic, and political development. However, research on corruption has tended to be fragmented and investigating the concept itself is a challenging endeavor. Due to the complexity of corruption as a research subject, we argue that in seeking to explore and understand corruption, researchers would benefit from using a framework that facilitates an interdisciplinary and process-oriented approach. This paper suggests that the method of system dynamics can be applied to advance the academic discourse on corruption in relation to natural resources, since it seeks to improve understanding and learning in complex systems in an illustrative manner. More specifically, it offers a platform to explore feedback processes between the different social, economic, and ecological dimensions which ultimately produce undesirable behavior or patterns. The paper outlines how corruption has been approached previously in the academic discourse. It then offers a tool to bridge knowledge from different fields on natural resources, in a way that allows for research from different fields to be integrated, and thus gaps are better identified. A process-oriented approach to exploring corruption in natural resource systems based on qualitative system dynamics methods can inform new questions and thus improve understanding about the conditions under which corruption occurs or corrupt behavior thrives.

Nexus between economic growth, energy use, agricultural productivity, and carbon dioxide emissions: new evidence from Nepal

Global climate change, exacerbated by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, notably carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, provides huge risks to the environment, development, and sustainability. This study empirically investigated the dynamic impacts of economic growth, fossil fuel energy use, renewable energy use, and agricultural productivity on CO2 emissions in Nepal. Time series data from 1990 to 2019 were utilized by applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach followed by the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) method. The ARDL bounds test revealed evidence of cointegration among the variables. The DOLS findings revealed that an increase in economic growth and fossil fuel energy use by 1% for each variable would increase CO2 emissions by 0.61% and 0.67%, respectively. Conversely, a 1% increase in renewable energy use and agricultural productivity may lead to CO2 emissions reduction by 3.65% and 0.41% in the long run. The estimated results are robust to alternative estimators such as fully modified least squares (FMOLS) and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). In addition, the pairwise Granger causality test was utilized to capture the causal linkage between the variables. This article put forward policy recommendations aimed at sustainable development by establishing strong regulatory policy instruments to reduce environmental degradation.

Policy instruments matter: Support schemes for renewable energy capacity in worldwide comparison

Renewable energy is a key component for increasing resilience and limiting climate change, along with ecological benefits and energy independence for developed and less developed countries alike. Surprisingly, the expansion of wind and solar energy capacity varies tremendously between countries, even considering the different economic and natural conditions. While some countries have changed their energy mix to a substantial extent, others have not yet unlocked their potential for renewable energies. Our paper thus asks for diverse factors explaining varying patterns of renewable energy potential exploitation from 2010 to 2019. Besides structural conditions and general political factors, we focus on specific regulatory, market, and funding policy instruments packages. We find that while regulatory and market instruments, as well as electoral democracy and government effectiveness matter for the expansion of wind and solar electricity production, high oil rents seem to counteract it. While regulatory instruments played a crucial role in the ‘implantation phase’ at the beginning of the 2010s, its impact declined over time while market instruments' effect increased over the ‘sprouting phase’ years of 2010s. This points to an increased market-readiness of the technology following years of market penetration.

Understanding the mitigation potential of sustainable urban transport measures across income and gender groups

The global climate is going through a transformation due to increased GHG emissions. Urban transportation is one of the leading contributors to increased GHG emissions due to its dependency on fossil fuels. Mitigation measures are evaluated globally to reduce the emissions from the transport sector. These mitigation strategies have a disproportionate effect on the income-gender groups, and the emissions contribution is non-uniform across income levels and gender. It is imperative to understand the emissions contribution of these groups. In this study, the CO2 and PM2.5 emissions from a combination of eight income-gender groups together are estimated for four urban transport mitigation policy bundles. Further, the emission potential of each mitigation policy bundle for each income-gender group is calculated by comparing emissions from each policy bundle with respective BAU scenario emissions. For a better understanding, policy implication on each income-gender group's specific travel parameters like mode share, average trip length and vehicle kilometres travelled are also assessed. Bundle 4, which is a blend of planning, regulatory, economic and technological policy instruments, showed the highest mitigation potential across all income-gender groups. The study finds that the majority of the female groups showed the highest mitigation potential for both pollutants for 2030 and 2050.

A UN Treaty for Marine Biodiversity: Establishing Environmental Policy Integration in Global Governance

AbstractAn extensive regime for marine biodiversity in ‘areas beyond national jurisdiction’ is currently discussed under the United Nations. A key aspect of its institutional design concerns the integrative quality of the treaty that is to be developed on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction – called the ‘BBNJ Agreement’. There is a large number of global and regional policy instruments regulating activities in the areas beyond national jurisdiction. Yet, issues of integrating and coordinating these instruments prevail, raising the question how a new treaty could provide for environmental policy integration in ocean governance. This paper draws on environmental policy integration literature of the past three decades to explore, ex ante, to what extent the planned ocean treaty can contribute to more institutional harmonization. It examines how the treaty addresses four key policy‐making dimensions of environmental policy integration, and new opportunities and challenges that have emerged, based on the attributes of the treaty provisions and its institutional architecture. This paper concludes that the BBNJ Agreement offers an alternative policy framework which has the potential to enhance the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity by triggering more international cooperation and collaboration and filling gaps in ocean governance.

Human Rights and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa (Adams et al)

In this seven-chapter report, the authors present a guide to the policy development of human rights-based fourth industrial revolution (4IR) policies in South Africa. Based on the input given during a workshop organized by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), at the beginning of March 2020, the comprehensive report covers various areas in which artificial intelligence (AI) and 4IR technologies are employed, or to be employed, in South Africa. The authors lay a foundation for the discussion within the current social-economic and political development landscape of South Africa, through their engagement with the various development policy trajectories as they conceptualize technological transformation. In the same breath, the report acknowledges that any successfully implemented 4IR policy regime would have to acknowledge and engage sources and dynamics of current socio-economic challenges in the country, such as unemployment, poverty, and inequality (p. 1; p. 93). The argument put forward in this regard is that while the anticipated technological transformation is meant to help various facets of South African life (p. 8-12), ignoring the extant challenges could hurt any chance of beneficial technological transformation (p.58). In Chapter 2, the report engages various aspects of data governance in South Africa through an analysis of various pieces of extant policy, with a comprehensive comparison to international (UNHRC) and regional (ACHPR) policy instruments. While the report acknowledges the nascency in the development is such policies, both internationally and within the country, it also notices various lacuna in the extant policies. Of concern are various implementation gaps in most sectoral (DSI, DCDT, DTIC) statutes in South Africa.

Fueling green connections: Networked policy instrument choices for sustainability regulation

AbstractThis paper presents a policy network analysis study that examines policy subsystem interconnectedness and cohesion, to explore three constituent regulatory policy instruments that have a combined impact on governing sustainability. The network surrounding the environmental sustainability of biodiesel policy in Indonesia is marked by high interconnectedness and relatively weaker cohesion, properties that impact how policy solutions are formulated through policy actor interactions and define prevailing policy formulation styles. Using primary policy network data on 46 organizations and the review of national regulations, laws, and directives, this paper tests established hypotheses on how instruments that are formulated within the same policy subsystem, share similar characteristics. While overall network interconnectedness and cohesion are important first indicators of policy instrument selection in the literature on policy design, this article recommends also including an examination of network centrality and the characteristics of dominant central actors who are in favorable positions to design policies, to better accommodate for different policy formulation styles.

Региональные государственные программы как инструмент развития энергообеспечения в российской Арктике

Organizing reliable and affordable energy supply for consumers in the Arctic area is an important and difficult task. An effective solution of this task requires taking into account many factors. This paper analyzes how various factors are taken into account in the state programs of the Arctic regions of the Rus-sian Federation, aimed at regional energy development. Natural resource, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal factors of energy supply are considered. The study is conducted on the example of four subjects of the Russian Federation, fully assigned to the Arctic zone (Murmansk Oblast, Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug). The main research method is content analysis of the relevant information sources. The role of regional government programs in regulation of regional energy development is specified. A review of the main state programs of the considered Arctic subjects of the Russian Federation is carried out. It was revealed that the tasks of energy supply development are unevenly distributed in the state programs of the constituent entities of the Federation, and program measures are differently detailed. The content of the analyzed state programs is compared with the factors of energy supply. It is shown that regional government programs are primarily compared with economic factors. As instruments of regional policy, the state programs of the regions act as legal factors. Factors of other groups are taken into account in state programs to a lesser extent.

Influence of the Crisis on Saint Petersburg’s Public Health and the Goals of Social Policy

ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to assess the influence of the 2014 economic crisis on the health of Saint Petersburg’s residents. The conventional hypothesis holds that the crisis negatively affected the public’s health and living environment. This hypothesis was tested by looking at changes in more than twenty public health indicators and factors affecting public health. In order to assess precrisis trends, a linear trend was constructed for each indicator and factor, and extrapolated values were calculated for 2015 and 2016. Deviations from these trends were the main measures of the crisis’s effect on these indicators. This research uncovered negative deviations from the trends of all indicators, but there were especially significant deviations in environmental protection, health care resources, and consumption of a number of foods. It is shown that the city’s current program for health care development has understated target values and does not take into account ecological factors. This reduces its effectiveness as an instrument of regional social policy. The proposed method calculates scientifically justified targets for programs to rebuild the city’s social services.

Development of project management of the region’s Economy

Currently, economic progress requires solving a number of interrelated tasks in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. A significant part of them concerns the problem of the effective use of the potential of enterprises and organizations, functioning in various sectors and spheres of the national economy. Consequently, appropriate project management processes in the region are needed to realize the economic potential. The problem of the study is how project management affects the development of the region, the solution of which is of significant practical and theoretical interest for the economy of the region. The purpose of this article is to search for and substantiate approaches to improving the development processes of project management in the economy of the region. The following methods of scientific cognition are used in the work: abstraction, analysis, induction, synthesis. The article discusses the methodology of project management, the budget of national projects of the Russian Federation and its structure. The system of state regulation of the development of the region’s economy has been studied. The relevance of using the tools of project management of the region’s economy is substantiated. In addition, the factors influencing the formation of the state strategy in the regional context are presented. New tools for the development of project management of the region’s economy are considered, such as: «Waterfall», «Agile», «Scrum », the critical path method (CPM), critical project chain management Critical Chain PM (CCPM). It is proved that the use of regional policy instruments largely depends on the potential of regions, territorial differences in their development, the specifics of regional problems, the degree of decentralization of public administration.

Public preference for sustainable land use policies – Empirical results from multinomial logit model analysis

Public preferences for sustainable land use policy instruments and the motivations behind such preferences are important to make appropriate policies. Based on survey data (n = 309) from northeastern Somalia, we examined preferences for a set of land use policy instruments relative to no policy (i.e. the current status quo) and how cultural worldviews predict such preferences. We used a multinomial logit model to analyze the comparative evaluation of choices due to its interpretability and robustness to violations of normality. Overall, the results show that the respondents are likely to consent to all types of land use policy instruments relative to no policy and are more inclined to market-based and informational policy instruments. Specifically, preferences for regulatory policy instruments are positively associated with hierarchy and egalitarian worldviews and are negatively associated with fatalism and individualistic worldviews with only hierarchy and fatalism are significant. The market-based policy instrument is desirable to all cultural worldviews except fatalism, but only egalitarian and individual worldviews are significant. Preferences for informational policy instruments are positively associated with all cultural worldviews but only egalitarian worldviews showed a significant effect. Although there are some contradictions, these results are broadly consistent with the proposition of the cultural theory of risk. This study highlights that preferences for land use policies are heterogeneous with cultural worldviews mainly explaining the sources of this heterogeneity. It is evident that the respondents were willing to consent to land use policies relative to the status quo of no policy and indicates the need for concerted effort to reduce land degradation and deforestation in the country. We, therefore, recommend that policymakers incorporate the different ways that humans perceive and interpret social-environmental relations into policy decisions to achieve sustainable policy outcomes.

The method of economic-geographic profiling of agriculture for territories with contrasting indicators of development

This work explores spatial differentiation of agriculture and the identification of the existing differentiation in a territory where there are contrasts in economic development as a whole and of the agricultural sector in a particular industry. The method of economic-geographic profiling for the Inter-capital region (along the line of the Minsk-Moscow profile) was used, and dynamics for the last 10 years were investigated. Approaches are proposed for the use of profiling to identify possible growth centers that can become drivers of agricultural development, as well as depressed areas that need to be developed primarily with the help of various instruments of interethnic and regional policy. The most important role in the development of depressed areas can be played by agriculture, which is characterized by short production cycles and the ability to quickly introduce innovations that inevitably arise in cross-border cooperation due to the flow of knowledge and technology, and exchange of experience and cooperation. Because of the profile, two emerging territorial agrarian clusters in Belarus were identified. Also, quantitatively and qualitatively, the gap at the level of agricultural development between the two states was highlighted, which turned out to be more significant than expected (for some product categories by more than an order of magnitude). Profiling for different time periods includes main trends in agricultural development of the Intercapital Region: gravitation of agriculture towards the centers of districts (agropolisation), polarization and the outrunning development of the Russian sector in recent years of the import substitution policy. With this influence of the capitals of the two countries and capacious consumer markets, the formation of high-intensity suburban agriculture is not shown at this stage. The absence of the influence of the inter-capital situation for the peripheral territories of Belarus and Russia is shown.

Методика оценки уровня социально-экономического развития муниципальных образований региона на основе выявления признаков локальной депрессивности

Development of any territorial system is the resulting dynamics of its compo-nents – in the case of the regions of the Russian Federation – its constituent municipalities. It is at this level that economic agents and residents directly come into contact with the results of state policy to create favorable conditions for doing business and comfortable living. Comparative studies of socio-economic dynamics on a municipal region make it possible to identify territories with similar development characteristics, which forms a rationale for the implementation of targeted regional policy measures in relation to specific groups of territories. The article presents an overview of publications on the issues of assessing the socio-economic development of municipalities, and substantiates a need to develop our own approach. Based on the attributes of local backwardness such as lagging behind in development from the other similar territories, stable negative economic dynamics; lack of conditions and opportunities for endogenous development, the author's methodology of comparative assessment of the level of socio-economic development of municipalities is proposed. The logic of building a system of indicators is presented, in accordance with which three areas of assessment (“the state of the economy”, “economic dynamics”, “conditions for maintaining human potential”) are identified. The selection of indicators is substantiated in the context of limited statistical data at the municipal level, and an approach for calculating integral indicators for each of the areas of assessment is given. An approach has been formed to the grouping of municipalities depending on the degree of manifestation of local backwardness. This grouping can serve as a basis for determining directions and instruments of selective regional policy for the territories with different levels of development.

The nexus between economic growth, energy use, urbanization, tourism, and carbon dioxide emissions: New insights from Singapore

Singapore is a foremost tourist destination country experiencing continuous economic growth and rapid urbanization which is causing higher energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This study aims to investigate the dynamic impacts of economic growth, energy use, urbanization, and tourism on CO2 emissions in Singapore. Time series data from 1990 to 2019 were utilized by employing the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) approach. The DOLS findings show that the long-run coefficient of economic growth is negative and significant, indicating that a 1% rise in economic growth will result in a 0.99% reduction in CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the coefficient of energy use is positive and significant which reveals that an increasing 1% of energy use is linked with a rising of 0.52% CO2 emissions in the long run. In addition, the long-run coefficient of urbanization is positive and significant, implying that rising urbanization by 1% causes a 1.90% increase in CO2 emissions. Moreover, the coefficient of tourism is positive and significant, which specifies that an increase in tourism activities by 1% is associated with a 0.45% increase in CO2 emissions in the long run. The estimated results are robust to alternative estimators such as ordinary least squares (OLS), fully modified least squares (FMOLS), and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). Furthermore, the pairwise Granger causality test was utilized to capture the causal linkage between the variables. This article put forward policy recommendations toward environmental sustainability by establishing strong regulatory policy instruments to reduce environmental degradation.

Assessment of regulatory impact as a necessary element of the economic and social policy of the modern state

Regulatory impact assessment as a tool for validating the consequences of legislative activity expands the concept of socio–economic assessment of public activity. Economic methods and measurement of legal, legislative and public initiatives are a factor in the development and objectification of economic and social systems. The object of the study is the socio–economic results of the activity of the legal and legislative space within the framework of the regulatory policy of the state. The subject of the study is regulatory impact assessment as a method and process for assessing the socio–economic consequences of regulatory policy. The purpose of the study is to present the detection of the content and economic foundations of regulatory impact assessment as an element of economic methods for assessing social and legal phenomena. The objectives of the study are expressed: 1. In the study of international and domestic experience of the subject area; 2. Formulation of methods and materials necessary to ensure motivated research results; 3. Argumentation and evidence–based results and conclusions of the study. The methodology of the research consists in the use of theoretical and heuristic methods of scientific cognition, including: analysis, synthesis, abstraction, comparison and other generally recognized methods of scientific cognition of economic and social reality. The results of the study are as follows: 1. Computational methods for assessing the regulatory impact of regulatory policy instruments are presented; 2. The general formula of the additive sum of effects from the implementation of a legislative initiative, a political decision, a legislative act, etc. is presented; 3. Definitions of the elements forming the result of the regulatory impact assessment are presented.

EU REGIONAL POLICY: POSSIBILITIES OF IMPLEMENTATION IN UKRAINE

The question of the possibilities of implementation of the toolkit of EU regional policy in the national economy has been studied. It is substantiated that at the current stage, the question of the possibility of implementing EU regional policy instruments is being updated, which is connected with military actions and the need to restore the infrastructure of the regions, which requires the accumulation of resources and a balanced management policy. It has been proven that in modern conditions, regional policy becomes a powerful tool for spatial regulation of socio-economic development, especially in those areas in which the effect of market levers is limited (social, environmental, scientific and technical). Attention is focused on the fact that the gradual increase in the budget allocated by the EU for regional policy indicates the importance and priority of the implementation of regional policy measures. It was determined that the concept of regional policy is based on strengthening the role of territories in managing the socio-economic and innovative development of EU member states, which involves the support of individual projects that contribute to regional development, cohesion and deepening of European integration, as well as the achievement of strategic priorities. At the same time, each member state implements its own regional development policy on its territory and provides local self-government bodies with opportunities for development. It is substantiated that the primary task for Ukraine is to improve the principles of building regional policy, taking into account the impact of global challenges, realistically assessing the possibilities of implementing positive international practices and standards that will reduce the level of economic imbalance and disproportionality. The experience of the EU countries proves that the use of effective forms of cooperation, i.e. the compatibility function of regions, is important in reducing the disproportionality of regional development.

ҚАЗАҚСТАННЫҢ ИННОВАЦИЯЛЫҚ ДАМУЫНЫҢ ЗИЯТКЕРЛІК ӘЛЕУЕТІ

The article substantiates approaches to improving state regulation of rural development by developing a set of regional policy instruments, as well as supporting the diversification of the rural economy and improving the activities of rural institutions, infrastructure facilities. The policy on the development of rural territories is proposed to be considered as a sphere of mutual responsibility of the state, rural territories, science, business and civil society. State regulation of rural social development does not matter in itself, but is reduced only to measures that mitigate the negative consequences of the formation of market relations. As a result, there is an urgent need for a systematic presentation of the substantive foundations of state regulation of rural social development, analysis of the consequences of its market transformation in the modern Kazakh economy and identification of areas for improvement [1]. The purpose of the article is to propose methodological approaches to assessing the effectiveness of state regulation of social development of rural areas based on the analysis of its content and features and to develop areas of improvement in modern Kazakhstan conditions. And also to consider the content of state regulation and features of social development of the village; to classify the means of implementing forms and methods of state regulation of social development of the village; generalization of the assessment methodology and development of criteria and indicators of the effectiveness of state regulation of social development of rural areas; determination of institutional and socio-economic consequences of market transformation of state regulation of social development of rural areas.