The sanction standoff between Russia and the West opened up new opportunities for Russian food manufacturers. A new import substitution policy declared by the government restricted the access of the leading foreign countries to the market and unlocked a potential for internal development. Russian producers spotted new niches in the food market. There exist numerous obstacles to assimilating new market prospects: organizational (logistics, infrastructure, etc.), investment, legal, economic, etc. The paper underlines that the problem of enhancing the effectiveness of food companies' marketing policy in the context of import substitution is among the most formidable challenges. The article generalizes the problems of implementing the marketing policy of Russian enterprises. It reviews the core findings of the research studies on exploring consumers' attitude towards Russian and foreign-made food products. The author formulates recommendations about executing sustainable marketing communication strategies of Russian companies under import substitution.

This article contains research about the phenomenon of digital inequality among different social groups in Russia. The short literature review, conducted in it, concerns the factors, which have an impact on the rise and spread of digital inequality. The types of digital inequality have been analyzed, and each of them has the relative digital divide indicators calculated. It has been revealed, that the digital divide in terms of the Internet and information and communications technology access between the rural and urban population has been decreased, however the divide in terms of digital skills has been increased. There is almost no digital divide in ICT among the middle-aged groups, and it is constantly decreasing. Although the digital divide among the older-aged groups is also growing down, it is still high, and the divide in digital skills remains unchanged. It is noted, that the country's territory in length objectively increases the IT infrastructure costs, hampers providing for the high-quality internet-connection for the rural people and is the reason for digital divide in terms of Internet-access.

The cross-border movement of capital has suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic since December 2019. Nevertheless, it is unrealistic for multinational companies to withdraw giant global value chains (GVCs) overnight because of the pandemic. Instead, active discussions and achievements of deals in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are expected in the post-COVID-19 era among various other market entry modes, considering the growing demand in high technologies in societies. This paper analyzes particular determinants of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) during the pandemic year (2020) based on cross-sectional datasets by employing quasi-Poisson and negative binomial regression models. According to the empirical evidence, COVID-19 indices do not hamper M&A deals in general. This indicates that managerial capabilities of the coronavirus, not the outbreak itself, determined locational decisions of M&A deals during the pandemic. In this vein, it is expected that the vaccination rate will become a key factor of locational decision for M&A deals in the near future. Furthermore, countries that have been outstanding in coping with COVID-19 and thus serve as a good example for other nations may seize more opportunities to take a leap forward. In addition, as hypothesized, the results present positive and significant associations with M&A deals and the SDG index, confirming the resource-based theory of internationalization. In particular, the achievement of SDGs seems to exercise much influence in developing countries for M&A bidders during the pandemic year. This indicates that the pandemic demands a new zeitgeist that pursues growth while resolving existing but disregarded environmental issues and cherishes humanitarian values, for all countries, non-exceptionally, standing at the start line of the post-COVID-19 era.

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This study analyzes the nexus between tourism and regional real growth for European regions at the Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS), level 2, for the period 1995-2019. The study uses the dynamic panel threshold model to analyze complex relations between variables. As the dependent variable, we chose real growth rate of regional gross value added at basic prices by NUTS 2 regions. The independent variable is regional arrivals at tourist accommodation, while the control variables are health, household income, and employment at NUTS 2 regional level. The study found the threshold variable for 95% confidence interval. The marginal effects in the low inflation regime are higher compared to marginal effects in the high inflation regime. The study results support tourism-led growth hypothesis, indicating tourism as a one of the main drivers of regional growth. This research contributes to rare literature in application of dynamic panel threshold model in tourism. As an implication, this study can be used as a methodological approach to analyze the impact of different variables (not only tourism, but also innovations, technology, well-being, etc.) on regional growth, especially in countries with high regional differences, such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Latin America, etc.