Open research questions in Regional Socio-Economic Development Trends

What the literature leaves open

• Although the MGE database is comprehensive, it has several limitations. First, the sample includes only officially employed graduates. If a graduate has not secured official employ- ment after graduation, no information is available regarding their subsequent labour market outcomes. Second, the MGE contains limited information on individual characteristics and abilities and lacks data on socio-economic factors entirely. Yet, individual and family charac- teristics can explain a substantial portion of migration decisions as well as the returns from migration. To address this, we use proxies for abilities, including the attainment of an honours de- gree and high university admission scores. We hypothesize that more capable graduates are less likely to engage in labour migration, either because they have already relocated to re- gions with higher-quality universities during educational migration or because they possess a competitive advantage in the local labour market. Additionally, we consider selection prior to university, reflected in the possession of a school certificate with honours. First, school achievements serve as early indicators of ability, while a university diploma with honours reflects post-graduation competence. Second, we hypothesize that graduates with honours certificates who did not migrate during educational migration are less likely to migrate during the labour market stage. A school certificate with honours thus acts as a proxy for abilities in the transition from secondary to higher education. High-performing individuals are more likely to obtain quality higher education and acquire specific skills demanded in the labour market. Such graduates enjoy competitive advantages locally and, ceteris paribus, are less likely to relocate, particularly if they already have employment and established social networks. Consequently, this variable is included in the selection equation of the probit model as an instrumental variable to correct for selection bias before the school- to-work transition. So, in the selection equation of the Heckman probit model, we include three variables: disability, participation in targeted training, and school performance. It is also important to note that we do not focus on the duration of an individual’s stay in the destination region; therefore, migration is not classified as short- or long-term. Addi- tionally, this paper places less emphasis on the effects of regional characteristics.

  University Education and Internal Labour Migration Outcomes of Recent Graduates · 2026 · DOI

• Despite the new geopolitical situation caused by the revolution at Maidan in February
\n2014, little is known about the real economics of Ukraine and its internal spatial disparities.

  From Global Economic Crisis to Armed Crisis: Changing Regional Inequalities in Ukraine · 2014 · DOI

• Gross migration patterns since the year 2000, when large transformational population flows ceased, have not been investigated so far in the existing literature.

  Inter-regional Population Migration in Russia: Using an Origin-to-Destination Matrix · 2007 · DOI

• Attempts to reduce destatization solely to the privatization of property are fundamentally incorrect; [these attempts], in turn, are thus far primarily limited to the search for ways of transferring the symbol of ownership of part of the assets of enterprises to the workers or selling small enterprises, shops, etc.

  Conceptual Foundations of Destatization and Privatization · 1991 · DOI

• As indicated above, then, the extent to which a given national popula- tion can be known to be typical of that of its titular republic will remain uncertain until much more data become available, so that such variations as those of fertility cannot be attributed with complete confidence to the influence only of the indigenous population.

  The 1970 Soviet census · 1972 · DOI

• Over 40% of total consumption is accounted for by food, and a large portion of this 23 Although specific data are lacking, one can speculate about the Russian trends within the manufacturing sector between 1880 and 1917.

  Economic growth and structural change in Tsarist Russia: A case of modern economic growth? · 1972 · DOI

• It was held that enterprises should pay the state for the use of labor resources as they do for the use of capital, since such com- pensation for society's outlays in training labor would encourage economies in the use of this scarce and valuable resource, as well as help in evaluating the eco- nomic effectiveness of production. 58 The urgency of the problem increases as more pressures are brought on enterprises to improve their use of labor, though facts are still lacking on the extent of losses incurred by dis- placed workers.

  Continuity and Change in the Soviet Labor Market · 1970 · DOI

• 129 It remains to be seen whether the accelerated growth has continued. 120 Labour shortage is no problem there, yet skilled labour is lacking to exploit efficiently the new areas and the investment put into them.

  Manpower in soviet agriculture‐some post‐Khrushchev developments and problems · 1969 · DOI

• 35 It is less certain that the private automobile will attain the same place as in the USA; it is not only a question of roads but also of producing the vehicles at a time when motor vehicles of all types are scarce.

  Soviet railway development · 1959 · DOI

• (1) be guided by Stalin's instruction of 1929 to use the Marxist theory of reproduction. Otherwise commensuration of investment and production costs, and of outlays at different periods, is impossible; (2) use Lenin's letter to Krzhizhanovsky (written in 1920) on the electrification project:'-1 its implications have been neglected by Soviet economists; (3) base all work on the law of value as transformed into its Socialist form. Recognize the difference between social and individual cost, as is generally done for commodities, but has not yet been applied to investments. Its use would show preference for the investment whose individual cost is less than the socially necessary. The difference between original and replacement cost is already used in practice for price-planning, but it does not appear in the theoretical literature, except in Strumilin, who does not use it fully. If the replacement value of products and fixed capital is determined consistently, 11 Here there is an implicit contrast between the index weighted by an observer aloof from the processes of production, and such a generalization of experience as is made by the producers and organizers in the 'labour-day', see pp. 166ff below. The 'labour-day' concept and its use have had little theoretical handling by Soviet economists; the problems of commensuration in agriculture are being solved 'politically' and in practice. 20 This list of 'radical errors' may be seen as a demand for simultaneous intellectual consistency and adhesion to reality. The demand is made in terms so different from those in which western economic thought pursues these desiderata, that at first sight there seems to be little connection between the two intellectual worlds.

  Some recent developments in Soviet economic thought · 1949 · DOI

• The scientific novelty of this article is that archaic types of geographical names of the Right-Bank Polissia in the 14th century, as a chronological fragment of linguistic stratigraphy, have not yet been studied.

  Фрагмент ойконімного ландшафту Правобережного Полісся і суміжних територій у XІV ст.: ареал і семантика твірних основ архаїчних типів географічних назв · 2025 · DOI

• This article explores family networks as an understudied yet crucial feature of the social life of small-town Jews in the Russian Empire, focusing in particular on the Lithuanian town of Darbėnai.

  Beyond the “Shtetl”: Small-Town Family Networks and the Social History of Lithuanian Jews · 2018 · DOI

• Although many scholars have linked postsocialist informality with the practices of the Soviet second economy, the extent of the continuity between Soviet and post- Soviet informality is rarely examined empirically.

  Post-Soviet small businesses in Azerbaijan: the legacies of the Soviet second economy · 2017 · DOI

• Although the amount of food for Kaunas residents varied slightly in different periods, it was still insufficient to ensure vital needs of the residents.

  Kasdienis gyvenimas Kaune vokiečių okupacijos metais (1941–1944): būstas, maistas ir pramogos · 2016 · DOI

• It argues that the ‘mobilities turn’ has tended to draw a connection between mobility, autonomy and freedom, and in so doing has inadequately explored and theorised involuntary and coerced mobility.

  Disciplined mobility and carceral geography: prisoner transport in Russia · 2011 · DOI

• Fourth, international competitiveness — as measured by revealed comparative advantage — remains limited to a small number of sectors that mainly produce primary commodities (particularly hydrocarbons) and energy-intensive basic goods.

  Russian Industrial Restructuring: Trends in Productivity, Competitiveness and Comparative Advantage · 2006 · DOI

• Although a definition based on the notion of "delegability" has been widely discussed, there is no consensus about the activities to retain, and it is hard to measure the time devoted to household production.

  La difficile prise en compte de la production domestique dans la mesure de l'inégalité et de la pauvreté : problèmes conceptuels et empiriques · 2006 · DOI

• This paper contends that survey techniques have particular limitations as research tools in an environment where local level case studies are scarce and where a host of new socio‐economic processes are creating fundamental shifts in the landscape of social provision, redistribution and employment.

  Poverty in Transition: An Ethnographic Critique of Household Surveys in Post‐Soviet Central Asia · 1999 · DOI

• This holds particularly true for colonization in the preemancipation period, which remains considerably understudied in comparison to the larger and better-documented peasant migrations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  Peasants on the Move: State Peasant Resettlement in Imperial Russia, 1805-1830s · 1993 · DOI

• Personal household plots (PHPs), which have definite potential for development, can be regarded as one of the insufficiently studied subsystems in the country's present agrarian system.

  Personal Household Plots in Siberia · 1982 · DOI

• In addition, there are innumerable books and articles on specific policy areas, which in practice become "urban books" because of limited information available about the countryside.

  Soviet Urban Politics and Comparative Urban Theory · 1972 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Regional Socio-Economic Development Trends

• Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve: western Europe during the early modern period · The Economic History Review · 1995 · 174 citations
• Disciplined mobility and carceral geography: prisoner transport in Russia · Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers · 2011 · 104 citations
• Resource Rents and the Russian Economy · Eurasian Geography and Economics · 2005 · 90 citations
• Emptiness · American Ethnologist · 2020 · 88 citations
• Poverty in Transition: An Ethnographic Critique of Household Surveys in Post‐Soviet Central Asia · Development and Change · 1999 · 39 citations
• Bearing the cost of politics: Consumer prices and welfare in Russia · Journal of International Economics · 2022 · 37 citations
• Socioeconomic Change and Homicide in A Transitional Society · Sociological Quarterly · 2007 · 29 citations
• Evaluating the role of<i>blat</i>in finding graduate employment in post-Soviet Ukraine · Employee Relations · 2014 · 25 citations
• Decreasing labor intensity in agriculture and the accessibility of major cities shape the rural population decline in postsocialist Russia · Eurasian Geography and Economics · 2020 · 25 citations
• Exploring agency of change in small industrial towns through urban renewal initiatives · Geografiska Annaler Series B Human Geography · 2021 · 21 citations

Most recent work

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