In their activities, state bodies and state-owned enterprises of Ukraine constantly turn to reference prices published by national and foreign news agencies, as evidenced by both regulations and data from the e-procurement system. However, the lack of definition or established practice of translation and application of terms related to this area indicates the underdevelopment or initial stage of harmonization of Ukraine's and other countries’ economic practice. We state that the issue of benchmarks regulation is relevant at the level of state economic decisions, given the specific impact of specialized news agencies on economic processes. Thus, the purpose of this study is to present ways of possible state regulation of commodity benchmarks in Ukraine. We determined that relations in the field of benchmarks in Ukraine are not provided with a legislative framework in full measure. Thus, it is characterized by discreteness, although the reference to benchmarks is carried out not only by business entities but also by government agencies. Therefore, some measures are proposed to regulate the field of benchmarks. Ukraine has a possibility to rely on the European experience, critically evaluate it and take the most important aspects of regulation, given the initial stage of development of the benchmark system in Ukraine. In particular, one of the possible actions is to establish a reference register of benchmarks. Furthermore, price reporting agencies and other benchmark-related economic actors might be recommended to bring their methodology and activities in line with IOSCO principles, as the clarity and transparency of market assessment are, among other things, a guarantee of objectively effective performance of tasks for taxation and in the public procurement.

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The article presents the results of quantitative and qualitative analysis of information activity in the structure of Ukraine's national economy. In particular, with a focus on such an institutional form of information activity as the media, the dynamics of changes in indicators in the structure of GDP, capital investments, employment are considered. The author presents the changes in the structure of the advertising media market during the decade. The main trend is the reduction of print media share and the transition of activities online. Qualitative characteristics of media show the structure of their ownership and the institutional environment of functioning. In addition, attention is focused on key legislative changes aimed at greater transparency of the media ownership structure and on actions to bring the conditions of media operations closer to European practice.

The present article investigates the link between economic growth, namely GDP per capita, and the media activity represented with the indicator of the press freedom alongside other factors such as infrastructure, institutional conditions, and foreign direct investments. A panel of 179 countries was used for the period from 2000 to 2015. In particular, we run two panel data analysis models, fixed effects and random effects models, and examined their output with Hausman’s specification test, which pointed the fixed effects model as more efficient for the presented data set. However due to the presence of serial correlation, heteroskedastic, and cross-panel dependence, a Prais-Winsten regression with panel corrected standard errors (PCSE) was implemented. The comparative analysis of models of four country groups, divided by GNI per capita, was conducted. Both statistically significant correlation coefficients and models’ output provided evidence of an association between economic growth and the press activity.