The paper analyzes the epistemology of the term “new normality” and proves that its use meets largely the interests of developed economies. The provided data demonstrate that for “the American idea of self-identification” in the international community this approach is utterly unacceptable and it rather concerns national economies which are not incorporated into the “satellite mainstream” of the implementation of the US economic interests. It is emphasized that the SCO, BRICS and EAEU members state are developing economies with a sufficient internal resource potential, including the human capital. They are setting up a system of their own national interests that is implemented in the current world, among other things, based on increasing the interaction and cooperation of efforts. The restructuring of national economies towards creation of new jobs, improvement of the living standards, development of the real sector and reducing dependence on developed economies, particularly the foreign capital dependence, is regarded as a decline in the level of development. But in fact, this process means the gradual disintegration of the monopolar configuration of the world economy with the dominance of the US economy and the US national interests.

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The rational organization of a territory is one of the key factors in the effective social and economic development of countries in the post-industrial era. This is especially important for large countries such as Russia having the largest territory in the modern world community. It is noted that the economic levers of the local authorities’ influence on the regional development in general and particular companies and organizations are not sufficiently effective. The regional budget is the basic document that defines the development prospects of a region, but in the budget planning the interests of central departments dominate over regional interests. Regional resources are weakly dependent on the results of their activities. The incentives for employees involved in the implementation of the most effective solutions are insufficient or lacking. In this context, the following vital problems of the territorial administration reform (TA) in Russia are analyzed: the current stage specifics and the basic TA system requirements; principal shortcomings of the existing TA system; the TA object and functions; the distribution of competencies between the center and regions; the harmonization of interests of the center, regions, economic entities and citizens; factors of impact on the establishment of the new territorial organization in Russia; strategic policies for the development of the TA economic and organizational mechanisms. The approaches proposed thereto may be useful in the preparation of the concept and the forthcoming real work on the TA reform.

Nowadays, the introduction of innovative business models is a factor of sustainable development of the Russian economy and its regions. One of such models is creation of clusters. The cluster approach came into widespread use in the 80s of the last century. The innovative development and understanding of the importance of the economy at the regional level made it possible to apply the cluster theory to these problems. At present, the cluster approach is regarded as one of the most effective tools for the development of national and regional economies. This is the way to allow the country to maintain the domestic industry and promote the development of entrepreneurship in the regions. Although the budget funding of the country’s industrial potential is characterized by relatively high indices it is not sufficient for the concurrent implementation of many large-scale projects, including the creation of innovative regional clusters and ensuring high rates of economic development of the country and individual regions. The paper discusses the use of the cluster approach to boost the innovative development of the region, methods for building a cluster management system, organizational and financial mechanisms for the development of a cluster. The analysis of the Russian experience in the use of innovative financial and economic mechanisms for creation and development of regional clusters made it possible to identify the main trends in the application of such mechanisms, evaluate their effectiveness and outline possible areas of improvement.

The paper is concerned with the development of a methodology to assess the impact of small and medium-sized businesses on the economic potential of a region. The state and the development trends of the small and medium business sector in the country are examined. A number of methodological approaches to the assessment of the economic potential are described. The entire economic potential is broken down into individual components laying the emphasis on the role of small and medium-sized businesses in their formation. In the development of the methodology for assessing the effect of small and medium-sized businesses on the economic potential of a region it is recommended to identify the basic structural elements of the economic potential that are directly affected by the sector. The above elements can be interpreted through five aggregate indices each of which includes a number of specific indicators characterizing the development of the small and medium-sized business sector in the region. The proposed methodology helps identify the most effective forms and types of the small and medium-sized entrepreneurship in individual areas of the economy, which makes it possible to pinpoint development centers represented by successful entities and through their support increase the efficiency of the entire segment of small and medium-sized businesses.

The paper describes the regularities of the economic growth in the Russian Federation in 1998-2014 in terms of the “wages - productivity” gap. The scientific basis for the research into this structural imbalance includes findings of leading international financial institutions engaged in the study of the quality of the economic growth in mineral exporting countries. Based on this assessment two hypothetical trends of the Russian economic development after 2014 are formulated: beneficial and temporary import substitution. The main difference between the trends is the ability of tradable sectors to satisfy the temporarily reduced internal demand by replacing now much more expensive imports with high-quality substitutes. The index of non-mineral exports to far-abroad foreign countries was chosen as the quality criterion for domestically manufactured products. For quantitative assessments, the data of the Russian Statistics Service for 2013-2015 was used classified by the structure of the import substitution in the commodity markets, the dynamics of imports broken down by product groups and investments in these areas. The study showed the emerging prerequisites for the Russian economy movement towards favorable economic development. At the same time the paper considers the risks of failure to achieve a favorable outcome if the policy of the unbalanced growth of incomes through the resource rent rather than the productivity growth in the tradable non-mineral sectors continues.

The study is concerned with the employment of retirement age persons in the Russian Federation. The economic crisis of the recent years has reduced the federal budget and the Russin Pension Fund revenues. This fact brings forward the issue of raising the retirement age, payment and indexation of pensions. Increasing the generally established retirement age leads to more payers to pension funds and less old-age pensioners. However, one should not expect a serious increase of the state budget since, firstly, part of old-age pensioners continue to work and, secondly, not all persons reaching the retirement age will continue their work because of the growing unemployment. The authors have analyzed the structure of pensioner employment by gender, pension types, length of service after being granted a retirement pension, economic activities and education. The dynamics of the average pension compared to the average wage and disposable incomes of the population are studied. The indices of substitution of pensions and the subsistence minimum value for wages are identified and analyzed.

Enterprises of the Defense Industry Complex are often faced with difficulties in making their reports in compliance with international standards for financial reporting and evaluation of assets and businesses at fair value, namely with IFRS Standard 13 “Fair Value Measurements”, for the lack of statutory regulation of reporting. The need to determine the fair value is because some of assets and liabilities essential for reporting are stated in the Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) at their historical value, which does not show the current (market) value of assets. As a result, foreign banks and investors are unable to judge the solvency of the lender. Determining the fair value allows the investor or the prospective lender to determine the current market value of available assets more accurately, which in turn gives the investors and lenders the real picture of the current state of an enterprise. The paper studies the main advantages of the harmonization of the national accounting and valuation for defense industry companies with international standards and defines the main levels of the impact of this harmonization. The Russian accounting system needs to absorb the most effective rules and traditions of foreign accounting practices, without losing the specifics of accounting at domestic defense enterprises.

The structural reform of the state financial control bodies brings forward the issues of assessing the control efficiency. Today, the mechanisms used to evaluate the efficiency of the financial control powers, as well as the notion of efficiency itself, are rather vague and subjective. The authors have classified and summarized the existing approaches to the assessment of the control efficiency and research findings in this sphere, identified the flaws and analyzed the reasons for poor applicability of the existing approaches in terms of current trends and problems of control activities. The generalization of existing quantitative and qualitative approaches to assessing the efficiency made it possible to classify the basic criteria that should be included in a potential model for evaluating the efficiency as well as develop additional factors that can have a significant impact on the control efficiency. The analysis of the actual performance of the state internal financial control authority and the inspections performed demonstrated the inapplicability of existing methods for assessing the efficiency of control activities. Proposals on the development of a radically new assessment model were made.

The results of the cash flow monitoring provide managers with the information basis for making sound management decisions in terms of improving the solvency, financial condition and effectiveness of the Federal Penitentiary Service. The paper discusses the key concepts of cash flows, a set of techniques and methods for their assessment and analysis, cash management objectives as well as the procedure for defining a net cash flow and ways to increase its management efficiency. To expand the number of persons involved in the formation of the company’s cash flow, the author proposes a scheme according to which structural units are assigned responsibility for the size of cash flows. The focus is put on the direct and indirect methods of making the cash flow statement for the study of factors relevant for the formation of positive, negative and net cash flows. There is a brief description of a methodology for determining the net cash flow from operating activities by an indirect method and the financial payment calendar in the tabular form. The cash flow budgeting procedure is shown as the essential element of the cash flow optimization. The importance of and the need for financial monitoring of cash flows with respect to the activities of the penitentiary system enterprises is emphasized.

The paper deals with the development of integral indices to assess the overall state of the economy. A method of calculating three indices is described: leading, synchronous and lagging with the focus on the leading index that detects turning points in the dynamics of the economy. All the three indices are calculated for the Russian economy as of 1999-2015; the forecast for April 2016 was made with the prediction error of 2.3%. The analysis of the results leads to the conclusion that the value of the lead lag has decreased compared with the previous periods and this is an evidence of the increased rate of changes in the industrial production dynamics. Moreover, the difference between the lead (4 months) and lag (6 months) of the leading and lagging indices, respectively, relative to the rate of change in the industrial production reflects the specifics of the structure of the Russian economy which is dominated by the export-oriented raw materials sector. In the calculation of an aggregate index, the problem of comparing partial indices having different economic meaning and measurement units is solved by significant adjustment of each index.

Hedging is one of the most popular strategies of the market risk management. The main purpose of hedging is to reduce the volatility (or variability) of the yield on the portfolio composed of spot assets and hedging tools. The hedging tools may consist of futures contracts, options and off-exchange tools such as forwards and swaps. Hedging strategies using futures contracts are the most simple ones and therefore very common in practice. The purpose of the study is to compare four hedging strategies where a share is a spot asset and a futures contract is a hedging asset. The results of comparison showed the strategy based on the calculation of the internal rate of return to be the most effective. According to the other two criteria, the above strategy and the least squares method turned out to be the best. A correction for heteroscedasticity made with the use of the maximum likelihood method did not improve the hedging performance of shares. This work can be developed in several directions, namely: consideration of option hedging strategies; adding other spot assets, e.g. exchange commodities or currencies, to the portfolio; taking into account the degree of the investor’s risk aversion in calculating the hedge ratio; introduction of transaction costs into the model.

The reasons for sharp changes in the direction of financial resource flows are a subject of research vital for any period of the global financial system history. The purpose of the study is to identify the main features of the financial phenomenon of a sudden stop in capital flows. To determine the theoretical parameters of the sudden stop in capital flows a review of the 1995-2015 literature was made. The likelihood of this event in the short and medium terms, in practice, is estimated based on the IMF, World Bank and the Bank of Russia data for the domestic economy for the period of 1994-2015. The study revealed three different approaches to the measurement and determination of a sudden stop in capital flows. In order to assess the significance of this financial problem for the national economy of Russia, a complex statistical analysis based on all the three approaches (the data of the financial account in the Russian balance of payments at one of the research stages was “cleared” from the reserves) was used.

The paper deals with the structural elements of the legislative and regulatory framework and the law-making activities of the Eurasian Economic Union in the dynamics of institutional formation and recording of the integration process in statutory documents with account for the WTO experience. The integration process includes multiple multilateral international agreements aiming to establish a supra-national legislation as a regulator of integration processes for the benefit of the EAEU members. A subject of interest is the establishment of the law-enforcement practice as an effective tool for ensuring the planned dynamics of the integration process and compliance with agreements reached within the EAEU framework. The role of the Eurasian Economic Commission in monitoring the legislations of the EAEU member states in terms of their compliance with international treaties and the EAEU laws to avoid duplication of regulations and discard outdated rules and requirements in national legislations is discussed. Attention is paid to the role of the Eurasian Economic Court in ensuring the appropriate level of the law- enforcement practice in the Union and its members. Finally, the paper discusses the research and expert-analytical activities for the analysis of the law to identify factors affecting the export competitiveness of goods, works (services), the mechanism for dispute settlement, etc. with a purpose of making appropriate proposals concerning the legislation and its regulatory effect on the integration processes within the EAEU.

The paper studies the European experience in the organization and functioning of bodies of the judicial community. The goals of their establishment are analyzed of which the principal one is to maintain the necessary balance between the independence of the judiciary and the possibility of public scrutiny over its activities. The paper also provides a brief comparative review of the judicial bodies of a number of European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, France and Sweden). In the caourse of the study the following key issues were addressed: the composition of these bodies (total differentiation by gender, the ratio of magistrates and non-magistrates); the term of office of their members; the procedure for the election/appointment of chairmen; their main powers (primarily with regard to issues related to the formation of the judiciary, the appointment of judges and their promotion) as well as bringing disciplinary proceedings against judges.. Finally, it is concluded that since the need to ensure judicial protection of rights and legitimate interests of citizens requires independent and qualified judges, it is the bodies of the judicial community in Western Europe who are to guarantee and strengthen the authority of the judicial system and promote the development of the rule-of-law state.

The paper analyzes the civil institutions of legal and contractual risks in mergers and acquisitions and gives an insight into the legal nature of their mechanisms in terms of the theory and practice of the civil law. Some of the legal problems and gaps in the law are identified and solutions are proposed. The importance of the topic is dictated by the cross-border nature of mergers and acquisitions. The legal analysis was made unadjusted for the changes made in the Civil Code. Examples of risks are provided and risks arising from the implementation of various procedures related to the purchase or sale of shares, including due diligence procedures, are analyzed. The basic concepts of the legal and contractual risks used in statutory instruments are examined and contradictions and flaws of the definitions are highlighted. Attention is paid to the analysis of concepts and interpretations proposed by Soviet Civil Law experts as well as to the interrelations between legal, economic and business risks. Classifications of legal and contractual risks are discussed.

The purpose of the paper is to show the prospects and risks of the formation of uniform judiciary bodies in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. To this end, the paper analyzes statutory instruments regulating the procedure of funding the judiciary bodies in the above countries, in particular Constitutions, codes, constitutional and federal laws. The problems of social guarantees to judges are identified; the system of financing the courts as well as funding procedures adopted in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan are described. The study contains two comparative tables that demonstrate the differences between the legal systems of the states and possible areas of improvement and harmonization of their legislations. The first table shows the key characteristics of the systems of funding the judiciary bodies in Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, while the second table contains social protection guarantees for judges in the countries. Finally, the author puts forward a proposal that the number of courts in the Russian Federation should be reduced arguing that the budget financing of the judicial systems should be implemented separately for each individual court. Such a financing system ensures the maximum efficiency and independence of the judiciary system.

The demands of modern society are setting up the prospects of the dynamic development of the innovative environment that combines vocational training with advanced science and competitive businesses. In turn, these trends necessitate the use of an integrative approach to the vocational training in higher education. The structure of the integrative approach implemented in the framework of a certain basic learning discipline produces multiple links at four levels of integration: interdisciplinary, intra-disciplinary, interpersonal, intrapersonal. The paper discusses the experience gained with the integrative approach applied to the basic mathematical program for first-year students trained for the BA degree in Economics at Financial University. Three components of the integrative approach are described. The first is a “socio-cultural” aspect related to the review-and-entertaining mathematics within the propedeutics of the future research. The second component of the integrative approach represented by the design activity is concerned with solution of practice-oriented tasks using the mathematical apparatus studied by first-year students. Finally, the third component of the approach referred to as the case-method aiming at mathematical solution of situational problems develops the ability to formulate a problem independently, structurize the information, find an optimal solution and prove its optimality.

To survive in a tough competitive environment universities must reduce costs while improving the quality of education. The best economic effect can be obtained only by the improvement of business processes at a university vertically and horizontally at the same time. Having calculated the strategic vector of the higher education system development as a whole, the Ministry of Education and Science set a task of reducing the number of administrative and support staff to state-owned high schools. However, this is possible only on the basis of improved productivity and changes in the organizational structure of universities. The most promising direction is to establish teaching and research departments capable of achieving a synergistic organizational and managerial effect by integrating human resources of several departments. This direction is followed by leading Russian universities, including Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation. The paper describes a methodology to produce a matrix of core labor processes and functions of the teaching and support staff within the core business processes of a department. It is proved that the organizational and technical component in the operation of the teaching and support staff of the department is increasing; therefore many employees of the teaching and support staff logically move to a new job status of a manager. One of the Standard Operations Procedures is provided as an example. The key provisions of the paper have a heuristic potential to improve the business model of an innovative university and the quality of strategic human resource forecasting.