Spatial development of Russia: the role of its Asian regions

We analysed the balance of environmental, social and economic development of the regions of Asian Russia, assessing the level of adjusted net savings. Using the selected indicators and the assessment of natural, social and production capital values, the typology of territorial production and resource structures of the regions of Asian Russia has been created. Based on the k-means method, using ‘Statistica 12’ software, the clustering and structural zoning by the ratio of natural, productive and human capital in the regions of Asian Russia was carried out.

Identifying the degree of dependence of foreign direct investments on adjusted net savings of the recipient country

Due to the loss of the dominance of GDP as the main macroeconomic indicator of the social welfare, this study uses a more accurate and realistic indicator – adjusted net savings (ANS). Based on the economic and mathematical modelling, the study suggests a new method for identifying the value of adjusted net savings as a stimulating factor to increase the inflow of transnational capital to the recipient country. After assessing the current environment of investment attractiveness of recipient countries, attention was paid to identifying the degree of dependence of foreign direct investment on adjusted net savings. The novelty of this study is conditioned by the search and identification of the dominant macroeconomic indicator of investment attractiveness of the recipient country. Such an indicator will most fully reveal the conditions and prospects for attracting investments. The aim of this study was to consider alternative approaches to the country's development and to demonstrate the existence of a functional relationship between the volume of foreign direct investment and adjusted net savings. The purpose of this study is to build models of the dependence of foreign direct investment on adjusted net savings of the recipient country as an alternative indicator that most widely reveals the level of social welfare and economic development of the studied countries. Adjusted net savings consist of elements that cover the sustainable development of society, namely the economic, environmental, and social components. As a result, using the correlation and analysis of variance, the existence of dependence and its degree of influence on the volume of foreign direct investment on the adjusted net savings of the recipient country has been proved.

Does Egalitarian Democracy Boost Environmental Sustainability? An Empirical Test, 1970-2017

Many argue that the twin problems of poverty and environmental degradation are best addressed by adopting greater egalitarian processes of governance. Greater egalitarian societies apparently contain the required social trust and consensus for making hard choices and tradeoffs for achieving environmental gains. We employ novel data on egalitarian democracy, which measure the equal access of the poor to political power and societal resources, and data covering weak and strong sustainability measured by the “adjusted net savings” and several indicators of atmospheric pollution. The results suggest that greater egalitarian governance reduces weak sustainability and increases the intensity of climate-harming pollution. Regardless of democracy, other measures of social equity, such as the GINI and equal access to health and political resources, increase, not decrease, atmospheric pollution. These results are robust to estimating procedure, several alternative models, and data. While liberté, egalité and fraternité should be pursued for their own intrinsic value, meeting urgent challenges from global warming may require more targeted solutions.

Sustainability and wellbeing: the dynamic relationship between subjective wellbeing and sustainability indicators

We analyse the relationship between individuals' subjective wellbeing (SWB) and measures of their country's sustainability. SWB data are sourced from the World Values Survey; sustainability is measured by ecological footprint (EF) and by components of the World Bank's adjusted net savings (ANS) series. ANS, a measure of weak sustainability, represents changes in a country's capital stock including financial, physical, human and natural capital. We show that an increase in strong sustainability, measured by EF and by ANS's natural capital component, is associated with reductions in SWB over the next decade followed by a rebound in SWB over the subsequent decade. We show also that the perfect substitutability assumptions on which ANS is calculated do not hold. Our findings highlight an important political challenge: governments that run sustainable policies may decrease the near-term wellbeing of citizens. This can reduce government's short-term popularity even though the improved sustainability may raise future wellbeing.

Comparative Analysis of Methods for Assessing the Transition to a Green Economy

The concept of sustainable development has become the basis for the future of humanity, and one of the tools for achieving it is green economy, which needs to be evaluated by offering certain methods of measurement. The purpose of this work is a comparative analysis of the most well-known methods for evaluating the implementation of the green economy concept at the national and regional levels, identifying their advantages and disadvantages. The analysis of foreign and domestic literature has shown that two types of integral indices are used mainly to measure the “greening” of economy: indices whose constituent elements require normalization (The Global Green Economy Index, The Index of the Green Economy, The Green Growth Index, The Ecological Footprint) and the indices that comprise the indicators which have a common unit of measurement (The Index of Adjusted Net Savings, “Green GDP”). As a result of the research, it was found that the normalized indices do not fully meet the criteria for aggregate indicators presented by the OECD. In addition, all the considered methods allow only to reflect trends towards the transition to a green economy, but not to assess the degree of its implementation. Further research will develop a set of indicators that can be used to characterize not only trends, but also the specific stage of transition to a green economy.

Adjusted Net Savings of CEE and Baltic Nations in the Context of Sustainable Economic Growth: A Panel Data Analysis

The article investigates the contribution of adjusted net savings to sustainable economic growth for 10 Central and Eastern European and Baltic nations, which are former Soviet bloc nations known as transition economies, using panel data analysis for the period 2005–2016. Our results indicated that adjusted net savings impacted on the GDP across the 10 countries analyzed. Nevertheless, national authorities are called on to implement policy changes in these countries to achieve sustainable economic growth and make an efficient transition from a brown economy towards a green economy.

Do environmental taxes impede economic growth? A comparison between China and India

The aim of this study is to determine the direction of causality between economic growth and environmentally oriented taxes between two countries, China and India. Further, it investigates which country is leading in environmental protection race by imposing and collecting more environmental taxes. The novel element of this study is that this is the first study comparing two economic rivals by environment taxes. The dataset consists of environmental taxes and its proportion to GDP and total taxes, transportation taxes, GDP and adjusted net savings for China and India. The data are taken from the organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) data bank from 2009 to 2018. The study utilizes the Granger causality to test the causal relationship between environment taxes and economic growth. The findings of the study posit that the imposition of environmental taxes will not only make the big economies environmental friendly but with sustainable economic growth.

ACTUAL ASPECTS OF MONITORING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF REGIONS: CORRECTED SAVINGS

The article presents current views on the current stage of improving the monitoring of sustainable development of the regions based on the practice of applying the idea of sustainable development over the past three decades. The tendency of methodological character is revealed: it is necessary to improve instruments for quantitative measurement of sustainable development taking into account regional peculiarities of territories. Attention is focused on indicators of sustainable development at the regional level. It emphasizes the priority of using the indicator of adjusted net savings (true savings). Denominations and features of calculation of this indicator are indicated. The features of foreign and domestic scientific research in this area are noted. The key elements of the mechanism of public administration associated with sustainable development of the national and regional levels are identified. The analysis of the application of the methodology for calculating the true savings for individual regions of Russia is presented. Directions have been identified for improving the application of this tool in public administration and commercial projects. The positions for inclusion of the component indicators in the modern monitoring of the development of the regions are singled out.

Economic growth and environmental health: a dual interaction

In most countries of the world, realizing the sustainable development concept has caused a lively discussion in the scientific environment regarding the mutual influence of the economic growth and the environmental health. Is the economic growth even possible without environmental damage? The answer is still unknown. Research studies both confirm and refute this interaction. The U-shaped curve (Environmental Kuznets Curve) hypothesis is the most popular in this regard. Scientists from different countries analyze the impact of the economic climate on the environmental health taking the hypothesis into account. At the same time, these studies use gross national income as a base indicator, which reflects only the economic dimension of the research, but does not consider the depletion of natural capital on the path of economic growth. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that have the most significant impact on the adjusted net savings in Ukraine and a number of selected countries, and also take into account the agrarian sector development, which is important in terms of substantiation of the expediency of a significant increase in natural agricultural production in the Ukrainian agrarian sector. The paper presents the results of constructing a model based on World Bank data for the period from 2009 to 2017, for Ukraine and 13 other countries that are neighbors of Ukraine and belong to the lower middle-income group. From the list of indicators provided by the World Bank to characterize the state of the environment in the world, 13 indicators are chosen that most fully characterize the situation in the selected countries. Based on the analysis of the panel data formed, the result is that agricultural land (% of land area), energy use per capita (kg oil equivalent), and agricultural productivity (value added per worker) have the most significant impact on the adjusted net savings. With that, the first two indicators show a positive impact, while the third one has a negative impact, indicating that the increase in productivity in the agrarian sector of the economy results in the environmental deterioration. All this allows us to conclude about the necessity to introduce natural agroproduction technologies in order to improve the environment, especially considering the fact that in Ukraine, the share of the agrarian sector in GDP increases every year.