Regional economic policy and structural changes in the economies of Russian regions

Abstract

When developing a modernization strategy for a region’s economy, it is necessary to understand what factors of competitiveness should be in its basis. As practice shows, a strategy that is based on the use of natural factors leads to the development of a particular specialization (as a rule, due to the extraction of natural recourses and production of “partial” products). A strategy that is based on newly created factors allows one to create secondary competitive advantages and promotes diversification in a region’s economy. Due to this fact, the author completed an analysis of Russian regions that allows for determining the factors of their competitiveness and estimating how efficiently they are used. Standard strategies for modernizing and increasing the competitiveness of regions are proposed based on the obtained results.