No 1 (2016)

With the introduction of a new financial instrument – an exchange-traded fund – more and more questions arise about its effectiveness and advantages over other financial instruments. The exchange-traded funds market is growing by average 30 % annually. For the past ten years, assets run by ETFs have grown faster than assets of popular mutual funds. The purpose of this study is to consider the options for investing capital in Russian stocks, and choose the most effective financial instrument currently available. The paper presents the detailed calculation of investment in the Russian Unit Investment Fund (UIF) “Opening – MICEX Index” and the largest foreign exchange-traded fund based on the Russian stocks Market Vectors Russia ETF (RSX). As a comparison, the authors provide data and calculations of investment in the US exchange-traded fund SPDR S & P 500 ETF. In this case, two options for investing are considered: one-time and annual investments. The results enable to choose the most effective tool and a way of investing the funds. Moreover, the paper reveals the main difficulties in the market development of exchange-traded funds in Russia, and absence of proper legislative framework is one of the key issues. In Russia, the exchange-traded funds are regulated like unit investment funds; thus, they are deprived of benefits, and the idea of creating such a tool that has received a general spread on the global financial market loses its sense. The authors provide recommendations to solve the existing problems, as the interest in exchange-traded funds on the part of private and institutional investors is great, but at the moment, the market is only trading the foreign exchange-traded funds.

The paper studies the phenomenon of entrepreneurial activity and its rethinking. Development and intensification of the “entrepreneurial activity” category is shown as consistent disclosure of its contradictory aspects. Revealing contrariety of entrepreneurial activity principles leads to deeper comprehension of the nature of such an economic activity, and that is important both for the economic science and to economic practice. The paper sequentially considers the interaction of opposite aspects inside the studied object. The author studies the contrariety of the entrepreneurial activity principles in the context of relations of such factors as the objectification and disobjectification, necessary and free, public and individual. The internal contradictions that underlie each relation are presented as parties, moments and trends mutually exclusive but assuming each other in its structure and existing integrally. It is shown that every contrariety generates a problem significant for understanding of business activity. The paper studies dialectic interaction of the processes of objectification and disobjectification when business entity converts the object of activity in accordance with its objectives and with it changes and develops itself. The author considers dialectic nature of entrepreneurial activity which permanently resolves contradictions between subordination of an entrepreneur to the social need, and free goal setting. The mechanism of transformation of the public into the individual, and of the individual into the public in the process of entrepreneurial activity is presented. The transition from one conflict to another has been studied allowing to identify the essential aspects and characteristics of the entrepreneurship, sources of its functioning and development. It is shown that a permanent solution and reproduction of internal contradictions on a new level allows the subject of entrepreneurship to substantively transform the economy freely and on the basis of innovation by coordination of private and public interests.

The concept of the green economy that has been forming for two last decades is intended to ensure simultaneous achievement of social, economic and ecological goals for various countries and regions. In this connection, the determination of standard indices, the selection of indicators and the development indices characterizing them and consisting of attribute and quantitative characteristics is the important issue when creating and implementing the concept of green economic development and growth. However, the issues of assessment and analysis of green development and growth using the system of indicators and simulation are not adequately presented in the native literature. The paper gives theoretical underpinning of the system of green growth indicators, which involves considering environment as the natural capital that provides the substantial contribution to the production and consumption of products as well as other forms of capital. Basing on the analytical study, the authors suggest reporting ecological services as manufacturing costs in traditional national accounts for production. In the result of the study, the authors determined following issues of assessment of the environment contribution to the social and economic development: underestimation of the role of ecological services and nature capital, the inadequacy and uncertainty of prices for them due to the lack of market for many natural resources and ecological services. The content analysis of literature allowed identifying two possible approaches to the development of indicators of green growth and development. One of them is to build the integrated consolidated indicator aggregating the information provided in the form of the index of environmental sustainability and welfare. Another approach is to remove indicators out of GDP to give the aggregate picture of economic growth sustainability and quality since the GDP reflects current income but does not take into account the key factors that determine the process sustainability, for example, the factors providing economic growth.

This paper presents the results of the study of the issue of international economic integration and its global influence on the world policy and trade relations based on the analysis of BRICS Alliance. BRICS members – Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa – are five cultures with different attitudes to the issues of politics, philosophy and economics, but they have a lot of common features as well, which may allow them gaining the global leadership in international economic relations. The author emphasizes the great importance of BRICS economies that are at the stage of dynamic development and dominate in the global dimension of economic growth. The author pays special attention not only to the geopolitical and economic prospects of BRICS but to the determination of their interrelation with the progress in the human development of the member countries as well. The paper shows that the BRICS countries are characterized both by similar and opposite peculiarities and challenges of economic development. The author considered factual data of the progress and financing of socio-economic potential of the BRICS countries, which prove the asymmetry between them both in the trends of external economic development in the quantitative and qualitative aspects and in the priority areas of its intensification. The paper analyzes the regularities that led to the formation of BRICS – the advanced international organization – as the new center of geo-economic impact. The author described the global economy trends that led to the emergence of the first newly industrialized countries and became the foundation for the BRICS formation. The author also considers the unique features of the BRICS bloc formation separating it from other blocs and describes both the features and the goals that unite BRICS countries and the factors that create obstacles for their cooperative development.

Special economic zones take the important place in the economy of many countries. They are created to resolve both the external economic and general economy problems of the countries. The creation of special economic zones of various types is caused by serious changes happened within the world economy for the last decades. The world practice has the extensive successful experience of functioning of special economic zones in various political and socio-economic systems, territories and conditions: science and technology parks in the USA, zones of high and new technologies development in China and others. The main goal of special economic zones creation is the solution of strategic problems (foreign trade, general economic, social, regional, scientific and technical) of the development of the state in general or its certain territory. This paper considers the approaches to the procedure of economic zones creation in the world practice: “from top” method and “from bottom” method. The authors gave the classification of special economic zones: export and production areas, free trade areas, technological areas, export stimulation zones, service, and complex zones. Special aspects of the economic zones formation, conditions offered for residents, the countries and regions practicing each of the types of economic zones are presented in the paper. The authors specified tax preferences for the participants of economic zones in Great Britain, the USA, China, Japan, Mexico, their aspects of functioning and the types of zones and carries out the analysis of the formation of special economic zones in the USA, China, Ireland, and the countries of Southeast Asia. Using the statistical methods, the authors showed the efficiency of the creation of special economic zones in the foreign economic activity of China. The paper presents the recommendations of the functioning of special economic zones in foreign practices, which could be considered in domestic practice.

The paper covers the problem of restructuring of nonperforming loans of commercial banks. The author gives the definition of restructuring under which an agreement between the commercial bank and the borrower is understood that contains the information on the new scheme of redemption of the borrower financial liability. The paper presents the review of the procedure of work with nonperforming loans for the restructuring purposes and considers the main causes and objectives of restructuring of nonperforming liability from the point of view of a creditor (commercial bank) and from the point of view of a debtor (borrower). Moreover, the author gives the analysis of the main instruments used in the process of nonperforming loans restructuring and considers the procedure of repayment holiday, the increase of repayment period, and the re-schedule of payments. Based on the analysis of existing instruments, the author concluded about the non-payment root causes and supposed that while restructuring the mortgage payments schedule, the creditor and the borrower are interested in the fact that the schedule would be acceptable for the borrower while retaining the existing balance of interests of the creditor and the borrower. Moreover, the paper describes the existing approaches to the loan value determination (the individual case of the mortgage loans): the variable payments and the reducing payments. The author presents the quantitative analysis showing the influence of restructuring on the loan value, which allows to make a conclusion that the prolongation of repayment period causes the overpayment, or in other words, the cost of the long-term loan (mortgage) servicing increases if the term of repayment increases.

The paper analyzes the evolution of economic doctrines of the essence of the economy openness and the necessity of protectionist security of its certain industries and sectors. The author proves the necessity of determination of balance between the tools of economy openness and protectionism in the state foreign economic policy. Based on the historical overview and understanding of foreign trade theories, the author proved that the choice between the policy of open economy or protectionism while managing foreign economic relations in their uncompromising variants was typical for previous centuries. Nowadays, these two approaches are interrelated and mutually essential. The issue of the interrelation common mechanisms should be considered principally in the context of historical moment and place of a country in the international differentiation of labour. In this regard, it was proved that the strengthening of protectionist measures by Russia is reasonable in the period of economy crisis and anti-Russian sanctions. At the same time, the paper shows that the protectionist security, whichever reasonable and effective it happened to be, cannot cancel the necessity of implementation of macroeconomic policy tasks directed at the restructuring in the near future of export-oriented and import substitution enterprises.

The author proves that the artificial safeguard from foreign competition reduces motivation for the improvement of domestic production efficiency, encroaches on consumer interests, and leads to the strengthening of inflation development in the domestic market. As the result, the author developed and proved scientifically the proposals on correcting foreign policy of Russia from the perspective of balance between the economy openness and protectionism. The paper draws the conclusions on the predominance of the concept considering the national economy as an open economy focused on the foreign market.