T he implementation of new automation technologies together with the development of artificial intelligence can free up a significant amount of labor. This sharply increases the risks of digital transformation. At the same time, certain regions and cities differ greatly in their ability to adapt to future changes. In this article, we seek to determine the capabilities of Russian regions to reduce risks and adapt to digital transformation. The literature stipulates that there are several factors able to reduce these risks. First of all, they are associated with retraining, ICT and STEAM-technologies' development, the promotion of economic activities that are less subject to automation. As Кeywords: digital economy; robots; STEAM; automation risks; technological exclusion; nescience economy; human capital; entrepreneurship; ICT a result of econometric calculations, we identified several factors that contribute to the new industries' development (in our case, ICT development), and, accordingly, increase regional adaptivity. These factors include diversification, the concentration of human capital, favorable entrepreneurship conditions, the creative potential of residents, and the development of ICT infrastructure. We identified several regions with high social risks and low adaptivity, which are mainly the poorly developed regions of southern Russia, where entrepreneurial risks are high, STEAM specialists are not trained, shadow economy is large. This work contributes policy tools for adaptation to digital transformation.

No abstract

Despite many governmental support programs, the entrepreneurship development in Russia is still very uneven. In this article we analyze numerous studies on entrepreneurship and find out that the institutional background in general and in certain regions is very important for the development of entrepreneurship. The risks of doing business, the complexity and duration of administrative procedures, access to capital, regulation and informal community norms are of extreme importance. The aim of this paper is to identify regional institutional factors for the development of small enterprises in Russia. With the help of the proposed econometric model we show that high investment risks and large number of economic crimes are significant deterrents for the entrepreneurial activity in Russia. The banking services’ availability and the proximity of large markets, combined with the human capital concentration, contribute to the entrepreneurship development. The impact of state support turned out to be not significant. We formulate some policy advice for entrepreneurship support in Russia.

I n the current climate of sanctions imposed against Russia by several countries in 2014, special attention should be given to high-tech sectors of the economy as a key source of import substitution on the domestic market. One of the important policy measures is to support the development of high-tech, specialized clusters by forming new linkages and strengthening existing ones between small and medium-sized businesses, large enterprises, and research organizations. The starting point for an effective cluster policy is to define areas with high potential for Keywords: clusters; small and medium enterprises; location quotients; pilot innovative clusters; regions; Russia; hightech industries clustering of these industries. The paper presents an original method to identify potential clusters and tests the method on Russian regions. We show that most of the state-supported pilot innovative territorial clusters are being developed in regions and sectors that have a high level of cluster potential. A typology of existing clusters depends on the index of clustering potential. We identified regions that have similar or comparatively favourable conditions for creating clusters in the pilot sectors.

This article describes the experience of localization and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the national level in the 10 countries which top the global SDG Index compiled by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. The authors apply methods of comparative and content analysis of national and international documents and conclude that leading countries began to work actively on the transition toward sustainable development more than a decade ago, established effective inter-ministerial coordination in this area and have achieved significant success. Nevertheless, even they are still far from the full implementation of the SDGs. Moreover, not all of them have localized Agenda 2030 within their national sustainable development strategies.The authors identify three key SDG localization and implementation schemes: full localization (e.g. Germany), implementation of the SDGs without their formal localization (e.g. Sweden) and the complete absence of localization (e.g. Finland). The most preferable and effective scheme, according to the authors, is the first one.In the late 1990s, Russia could have become one of the pioneers of sustainable development. However, due to insufficient political will, Russia is still at the initial stages of its transition toward sustainable development. In order to catalyze progress in this area, Russia needs to urgently develop and adopt a national sustainable development strategy in which all of the SDGs are localized, take into account SDGs in other key strategic documents and set specific quantitative goals and designate ministries that will be responsible for achieving these goals.