No 1 (2017)

The efficiency of financial market functioning largely depends on their institutional members that are able to satisfy market demand in its provided services. These circumstances demonstrate the importance of studying the quantitative composition of financial market participants and determine the relevance of the topic chosen for the research. The paper defines the essence of the financial market, considers its basic functions. Based on the archival and contemporary statistical data, the authors performed the quantitative analysis of leading financial institutions, among which credit institutions, insurance companies, and private pension funds were selected. The paper illustrates the dynamics of quantitative composition of participants for the period from 2006 to 2016 and pays attention to the structure of assets of credit institutions by the periods of the research. It is identified that the significant changes in the composition of banking system participants were caused by the world financial crisis of 2008–2009 and by the significant changes taking place within banking system since 2015. The authors identified the causes of reducing the number of insurance companies in the market. The main cause is the strengthening of license requirements for carrying on the insurance activity in the market. As the main cause of reducing the number of occupational pension funds the current situation in the market of collective investing is determined. According to the results of the research, the authors concluded that general trend of changes taking place in the financial market, both in the reduction of membership and in financial aspects of carrying on the activities, is the result of regulatory measures of Central Bank for the improvement of the institutional participants efficiency and the functioning of financial market in general.

A cluster, a relatively new phenomenon in economics, is considered as one of the best forms of organization of production in the context of Russia. The paper deals with the cluster definition and structure within M. Porter’s cluster model.

The goal of the research is the identification of the determinants of territorial industrial and innovative clusters organization on the base of the analysis of the global experience of creation and development of industrial and innovative clusters. The cluster’s structure is formed by the creation of vertical links between the resource providers, producers, and consumers, as well as horizontal links between the main products manufacturers and the companies producing related goods and services. The institutions providing various services in the field of primary and secondary business processes are considered to be one of the defining elements of a cluster.

The authors differentiate between the concepts of a “cluster”, an “industrial park”, and a “technology park”. Industrial parks and technology parks are considered as the environment for creating a cluster. Two types of clusters are distinguished: the traditional industrial clusters and the industrial and innovative clusters. The authors define the differences between the industrial clusters and industrial and innovative clusters as well.

The authors analyze the foreign countries’ experience in creation and development of innovative clusters and consider special aspects of formation and functioning of such clusters as the Research Triangle Park (the USA), the industrial and innovative cluster on the base of “Berlin – Adlershof” technology park (Germany), the cluster of information and communication technologies in Bangalore (India), the innovative cluster on the base of “Zhongguancun” technology park (China), “Cosmetic Valley” (France), and Singapore Science park (Singapore).

The overview of international experience of creation and functioning of clusters made it possible to identify the following determinants: the state participates at the stage of cluster’s creation and growth; a cluster formation takes place on the basis of technology parks established by the state; horizontal and vertical links between companies play the key role; the determining factor of a cluster’s location is the availability of innovative core; the level of demand in the researched examples varies in the level of localization.

In the context of transition to the sixth technology revolution, while implementing the strategic development program, the university top management faces the challenge of formation of the strategic activities optimal portfolio. Human capital is one of the priority areas of investment, and the improvement of its level is the essential condition for sustainable development allowing timely achieve the university strategic goals. It causes the necessity to create a complex of interrelated models, which allows optimizing the university strategic projects portfolio that leads to the human capital development and assessing quantitatively the impact of human capital on the target values of key indicators of the university development. The paper proposes the dynamic model of the formation of the optimal plan of strategic actions in the sphere of human capital development of the university business units taking into account the current human capital, the age structure, the planning period, and the investment volume. The objective function of the model is the integral indicator assessing the progress on reaching the indicators target values of the strategic objectives of business units (caused by the university strategic objectives). The variables being optimized are the Boolean variables of involvement of one or another event to the activities portfolio for a university business-unit employee at a certain point.

The paper considers the example of defining a portfolio of activities in the sphere of human capital development (for four areas: “Education”, “Health”, “Reproduction” and “Image”) for three university business units to achieve strategic university goals for five years planning horizon. The calculation results allow forming the action plan (“roadmap”) in the sphere of human capital development and are a fundamental part of management decision-making for the university investment strategy implementation.

The paper considers the remote banking, or RB, – the youngest and the most popular with corporate customers commercial service, one of the packaged products of settlement and cash services (SCS), and, namely, the issues hindering its development at the regional level using the example of Primorsky Krai. The authors give the definition of remote banking, list its components, mention the brief characteristic of Internet banking, and present a number of advantages compared with its earlier version, PC banking. One of these advantages is the economy of time: there is no need for legal entities to apply personally to a financial institution to make necessary financial transactions or to obtain the information on their accounts, as it can be done remotely using any PC or gadget. Based on the study and comparison of statistical data of Central Bank of the Russian Federation on the dynamics of settlement accounts opening using the Internet connection in Primorye and in the Russian Federation in the whole, the paper evaluates the popularity of the remote banking services. Following the innovations of technical advance, banks try to improve their service package but still the level and the number of remote banking services provided by small commercial organizations of Primorye vary notably from those offered by large banks or online banks. That is why, despite positive characteristics and basing on the analysis of literary sources and the experts’ opinions and reports, the authors identified a number of issues, such as the insecure use of this technology, the provision of the implemented solution recoupment, the information technology staff shortage, and others. Barriers identified in the area of remote banking services hinder to a certain extent the development of this innovative sector at the regional level.

The paper reveals analytically the essence and special aspects of such phenomenon as “precarization”, which involves wide spheres and groups of modern society and influences negatively the various (social, economic) components of the life of an individual and the population in general. The state of precarious work in Russia is proved by the statistical data for 2004–2015.

The center place is given in the paper to the consideration of the problems and causes of mass precarization of employment in the world and in Russia. The authors considered the demographic growth and the rejuvenation of population, globalization processes and the formation of the open global market of goods, services and labor, general human migration, the commercialization of public institutions, scientific and technological progress and robotization to be the global trends. Among the main problems associated with the development of precarization in Russia, the authors specify the low salary level, and, as a consequence, the low solvency of population; weak public confidence in social security due to the instability of state policy systems; the significant number of single-industry towns, whose life is depends completely on the operation of one or two enterprises; the disproportionality between supply and demand of certain categories of employees.

These factors contribute to the formation of social injustice, the formation of precariat class in the society structure, the aggravation of contradictions between the rich and the poor, the strengthening of social and political instability. The authors form two groups among the precaria: volunteers and forced precariat. Since they have a completely different attitude to their status, the authors suggest different ways to solve the problems of these groups

In general, these economic and social processes require a fundamental study and transformation of the current situation to improve people’s living standards, the precarization inhibition all over the world, and the global economy recovery. Consequently, the goal of the study is the analysis of precarization causes including the specific conditions of Russian social and economic processes and the identifying the main ways to solve this problem.