Monitoring the effectiveness of the monetary policy of central banks is a crucial factor in the strategic management of the monetary sphere, not only at the national but also at the global level of the economy. Therefore, improving the methodological tools for this monitoring is of both scientific and practical interest, which determines the relevance of the research topic. The study aims to develop methodological tools to conduct a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the effectiveness of the monetary policy of central banks. The work uses a targeted approach to determining the effectiveness of the monetary policy, as well as methods of systemic-structural, comparative economic and GAP analysis. The empirical analysis of the effectiveness of the monetary policy in several countries for the period of 2014-2019 relies on the data of the World Bank and the Bank of Russia. The novelty of the study is in the targeted approach to the analysis and assessment of effectiveness. This approach is based on the specific features of strategic management of monetary circulation, which allows for a comprehensive objective assessment of the effectiveness regardless of the variety of strategic objectives of monetary policy and their development mechanisms in different countries. The study resulted in the methodology for quantitative assessment of monetary policy effectiveness and the criteria for qualitative evaluation of the analyzed effectiveness. The authors made conclusions regarding changes in the effectiveness of monetary policy in different countries, identified trends in the effectiveness of the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia, and revealed imbalances in its effectiveness at the level of federal districts. The results of the study confirmed the applicability and practical significance of the developed tools for analyzing and assessing the effectiveness of the monetary policy of central banks. By their means, international and national organizations will manage to identify best practices to implement monetary policy and recommend them for countries with low effectiveness of strategic management of monetary circulation.

The subject of the research is the relationship between the amount of fiscal equalization grants and the length of transport routes in the regions. The study aims to test the hypothesis that the current formula for intergovernmental equalization creates disincentives for developing the road network in the regions. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that equalizing interterritorial inequality and regional infrastructural development are the most important goals of regional policy, whose instruments should not contradict. The current formula for distributing fiscal equalization grants contains a negative relationship between the length of transport routes in the regions and the amount of the transfer. That is, with an increase in the length of roads, the amount of grants to regions with initially low transport accessibility decreases. The author used the method of simulation modeling to quantify the reduction in grants to regions with low transport accessibility in the case of an increase in the length of roads in 2020 and to assess the potential impact of this decrease on the policy of regional authorities. As a result, the author revealed that while maintaining the current dynamics of road construction, an increase in the length of transport routes will lead to a decrease in the volume of grants to regions within 1%, which is insignificant regarding incentives. However, with an increase in the road network of hard-to-reach regions by one and a half times or more, this decrease may become critical. The work provides the estimate of the minimum additional fiscal revenue required to compensate for the lost income of the region with an increase in the length of transport routes. A further study may provide more details on the impact of the road industry development on the own revenues of regional budgets.

The intensification of investment dynamics is a determining factor in the new growth model of the Russian economy. The Covid crisis has greatly limited the opportunities to use this factor and made restoring growth dynamics an urgent task. The aim of the study is to determine the investment function of the Russian economy before the Covid crisis in order to identify the main instruments of the investment policy of growth in the post-crisis period. The research methods are macroeconomic and regression analysis based on software Gretl 2020b, which helped to choose the investment function according to the instrument-factors. Solving the problem of collinearity of multiple regression factors makes it possible to select the best models for GDP and investment in fixed assets of the Russian economy. The research result is selected multivariate models of gross product and investment that allow considering the impact of the following instruments on the goal’s function: monetization level, key interest rate, exchange rate, risk, profitability, oil prices, financial investments, inflation. The author concludes that an increase in the monetization of the economy, a decrease in the key interest rate, and a controlled devaluation generally had a positive effect on the amount of investment in fixed assets. The investment growth increased the risk of economic activity; the decrease in profitability relatively decreased investment and increased Russia’s GDP with an increased risk over the considered time interval. When implementing investment policy, one should consider these features along with the specified macro-aggregates, the structure of investment distribution between sectors and types of investments, for example, in financial and non-financial assets. The paper shows the significance of this condition, which affects the effectiveness of the investment policy, when the shift in investment towards financial assets accompanies the slowdown in economic growth. The prospect of further research is an assessment of the equalization of sectoral risks affecting the distribution of investments and investment dynamics.

The authors empirically assessed the impact of the availability of industrial companies to financial capital on their innovative behavior. The relevance of the study is due to the need to develop new analysis tools and stimulate the innovative development of industrial companies in an unfavorable external environment. The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between the availability of financial capital for industrial companies and the possibility of transforming their innovative behavior into a more advanced innovative regime. The authors applied the method of regression analysis of survey data in 648 Russian industrial companies for 2015-2019 to test the three following hypotheses: 1. The financial performance of industrial companies depends on the model of innovative behavior; 2. Financial capital has a significant positive effect on the choice of a more advanced innovative behavior and on the performance of industrial companies; 3. Different availability restrictions to financial capital have a different impact on the choice of innovative behavior and the performance of industrial companies. The authors analyzed two types of restrictions on financial capital: light, when the rate of return from the company’s activities is below the lending interest rate; and strict, when the company does not have access to the credit market. The authors proved that the choice of a particular model of innovative behavior depends on the availability of financial capital of industrial companies. The conclusion is that different types of financial capital constraints affect the choice of a model of innovative behavior in different ways. The authors suggest allocating resources for innovation, development and launch of new products on the market even in conditions of limited access to financial capital. Alternatively, in the context of extremely limited financial capital, it is to develop imitation innovations in new or existing markets.

The article considers the influence of the complexity of the social system on the growth of financial costs for the maintenance of the central management system. The subject of the article is Professor Dmitry Sorokin’s theory that Russia cannot be a world technological leader due to objective reasons: a large territory, a severe climate, a multinational and multi-confessional composition of the population. These conditions predetermine a strong power vertical and increased financial costs, leading to the bureaucratic despotism and worse effectiveness of market innovation mechanisms. The relevance of the problem is in the need to clarify the management capabilities and limitations of regimes with strong centralized power. This issue is becoming more urgent due to the fact Wagner’s law, which requires faster growth of public expenditure compared to the economy, has ceased to operate. The article aims to theoretically illustrate and to test the theory by D. Sorokin. On this purpose, the authors built a simple theoretical model of economic growth with an institutional factor reflecting the properties of the control system. The novelty of the approach consists in building an institutional function that includes management costs for maintaining the internal integrity of the country and its external security, the management potential (“strength”) of the central government and the mechanism of market selfgovernment. The initial driving force of the model is the growing complexity of the managed system, which, by D. Zolo’s complexity theory, leads to the wide spread of authoritarian political regimes. The analysis of the model and computational experiments allowed to establish the conditions when Sorokin’s theory is valid and when not. The calculations have led to the conclusion that even a tough authoritarian rule can stimulate the country’s economic development, provided that the current system of central government is highly efficient and low in financial capacity.

The article aims to identify the influence of corporate social responsibility on the relationship between brand value and the company’s financial performance. The methodological basis of the work is an empirical study of an open data sample on 78 American companies for 2000-2019. The authors analyzed 962 observations from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database. The Interbrand consulting agency was the source for determining the brand value. Built by the authors, three regression models rely on panel data and control an extended set of accounting and corporate variables. The evaluation of the models employs a fixed effects model. The authors conclude that corporate investments in social responsibility activities have a positive indirect effect on the company’s financial performance, such as return on assets and market capitalization: the influence of brand value on these indicators increases due to a high level of corporate social responsibility and ethical behavior. The study showed that the level of corporate social responsibility neither enhances nor it weakens the influence of the brand on the return on equity. The study results may be of practical use to owners, top management of companies and investors when making the company’s strategy and investment decisions. Moreover, the research materials can be used by public authorities to stimulate the corporate social responsibility. The prospects for future research may relate to lifting the current restrictions: research on samples that include more heterogeneous companies and/or companies from different countries.

This paper presents a model for visualizing the organization’s activities based on the market value-to-sales ratio (utility coefficient), which is a segmented two-dimensional diagram (utility diagram). The aim of the study is to develop measures to improve the quality and effectiveness of management decisions taken to implement the principles of sustainable growth of a company’s capital value, considering the specifics of the business, with the identification of the optimal ratio of the structure of the balance of assets, costs and net profit with revenue, in order to find a compromise between the current value and development. The author used the following methods: financial ratios, statistical, balance, systematic and logical thinking, visual presentation. The results of the multivariate analysis indicate that there is a significant correlation between the utility and various ratios of financial reporting indicators for a representative sample of two hundred domestic and foreign companies. The article offers a model to assess the activities of organizations, including those not listed on the stock exchange, and correlate them using a matrix of key factors, according to their influence on the final cost of the business. The author concluded that the increase in the market value-to-sales ratio mainly depends on the profits of the asset, however, for different segments of the utility diagram, the influence of this factor is not the same. Effective strategies must be considered depending on the type of activity, then the productivity of solutions and their value for the market as a whole will increase significantly. The implementation of the model makes it possible to compare the dynamics of the activities of organizations with industry competitors for a selected period of time, at the strategic level to determine directions for increasing the utility coefficient, and in the future, it can be used as an alternative method for assessing the value of companies.

The relevance of the problem of the banking sector development lies in the fact that banks, implementing their economic policy, can ensure continuous sustainable growth of the entire national economy. The study aims to offer long-term proposals for the development of the banking sector of Azerbaijan, which will bring it to the next level. During the research the author used such methods as the study of literary sources, analysis, synthesis, abstraction and special methods. The study presents six major macroeconomic factors that significantly affect the rate of the long-term growth of the banking sector: customer focus, legal framework, new banking technologies, cyber threats, use of the experience of large IT companies, and qualified personnel. The author analyzed the effects of these factors on the long-term growth rate. Recommendations are given on the use of innovation and advanced technologies for the benefit of development, that will allow building an efficient and competitive banking system. Based on the results of the study, the author formulated proposals for improving the banking sector of Azerbaijan that will bring it to the next level. In particular, it is proposed to optimize robotic process automation, namely, to completely revise the existing methods of work, and not just solve problems using robotization. The author concluded that there is a long way ahead towards ensuring the sustainable development of the banking sector in Azerbaijan, which is currently at the beginning of its journey. Further research on this topic will allow a deeper study of digital opportunities and prospects for the integrated implementation of innovation.

The author studies the recent changes in the operating conditions of commercial banks regarding servicing corporate clients. The aim of the study is to find ways in the current conditions to change the approaches of banks to doing business with corporate clients to get more profit. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study is the scientific works by foreign scientists and experts on improving the efficiency of banking organizations. The author used the methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis of scientific publications, regulatory and legal sources, retrospective statistical data and analytical materials of well-known consulting companies. As a result, the author identified areas for improving the internal banking processes: deeper analysis of the client’s activities and the industry where they work; high speed of processing client data without requiring to submit the same documents each time; personalization of the offer to the client of the service according to products, price and other conditions that will attract them to develop their business with this bank; development of financial services by the bank that will help the client to direct more funds and attention to their core business. The author concludes that introducing new approaches in cooperation with companies allows banks not only to solve the issues of increasing the profitability of corporate business, but also to help bring the return on capital invested by banks’ shareholders closer to the cost of capital, which is an important guideline for investors when choosing investment objects.

The stable development of the banking sector is closely related to interbank competition. The subject of the research is the improvement of interbank competition, which contributes to improving service quality standards, reducing costs and prices, expanding the product line, and clearing up the market from weak and unscrupulous participants. The study aims to make recommendations for improving interbank competition to ensure the stability of the country’s banking sector. The work employed the analytical methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, graphic method. The theoretical aspects of the subject helped the authors to formulate their concept of interbank competition as the bank competition attractive sources of accumulating resources and placing them considering the customer-oriented approach and in order to ensure their stability in the banking market. The practical analysis relies on statistical data from the Bank of Russia and reflects the uneven distribution of banks across the country with the dominance of banks with state participation. The systematic and integrated approaches of the study made it possible to identify the main trends in interbank competition: monopolization, centralization, concentration of capital, federalization, and globalization. The authors conclude that a significant decrease in the number of banks against the increase in assets of state-owned banks limits interbank competition. The largest state-owned banks dominate in the country’s deposit and credit markets. The Herfindahl-Hirschman index demonstrates the sufficient importance of credit institutions in the market. Foreign banks also influence their competitiveness. The authors proposed measures aimed at strengthening interbank competition: reducing the degree of state participation in the banks’ capital by establishing a standard for the permissible state participation in the authorized capital of credit institutions; establishing equal “rules of the game” for all participants in the banking market and excluding state privileges; developing regional small and medium-sized banks through tax and financial incentives. The prospect of further research is in a more detailed study of minimizing factors that negatively affect interbank competition.