Неэргодическая экономика

The article considers the process of digitalization of the Russian economy and the penetration of this process into the sphere of higher education. We show that the digitalization of applicants’ admission to Russian universities takes place within the framework of a global trend aimed at introducing the customer centricity approach in the public administration system. In particular, we consider the results of three–year operation of a special electronic service “Admission to the university online”, which is also called the Superservice. The analytical indices introduced into consideration make it possible to identify major technical and organizational issues that emerge in the course of digitalization of Russia’s social space. These issues can be divided into objective and subjective, which equally hinder the final implementation of the new electronic system. The calculations carried out have shown that the peak load on the Superservice system is from 10.2 to 16.9 million simultaneous actions, which entails persistent technical failures in the operation of the platform. We substantiate an opinion, according to which the figures obtained do not go beyond the limits of modern computing capabilities of information services, which in turn indicates administrative miscalculations in making decisions about the smoothness of functioning of the Superservice. We have found the effect of artificial commotion, when the very options of the Superservice provoke increased activity of applicants during the admission campaign, which leads to technical failures of the system. The calculations have shown that the number of applications submitted by applicants through the Superservice is on average more than three times higher than the same indicator for applicants using the traditional application form. We consider the prospects of gradual weakening and even disappearance of the artificial commotion effect as the services provided by the Superservice are becoming a common thing.

The geopolitical turbulence and the implementation of large–scale international sanctions dictate the need to assess the degree of readiness of the states to a longterm civilisational confrontation. The article aims to construct and test a new analytical tool – antifragility index of the national economy. Methodologically, the research is based on the idea that in the presence of several industries, the national economy obtains a functional foundation and a possibility to exist autonomously in conditions of disrupted international trade relations. To put this idea into practice, the article proposes a heuristic algorithm for constructing an antifragility index of the economy taking into account the priority of such industries as agriculture, pharmaceuticals industry, production of means of labour, and mineral extraction. Based on the national statistics of eight states – the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Brazil and Russia – the paper presents pilot calculations of the index. According to the results, only Russia’s index showed an upward trend in 2003–2020, while in the other seven countries it went down. The antifragility index is shown to have an ability to capture the peculiarities of political cycles and event shocks in the world economy. The research provides empirical evidence that the change of the leading country, amongst other things, is associated with the accumulation of structural disproportions in the economy: the weakening of its foundation made up of vital industries and excessive complication of the industrial superstructure in the form of the non–productive sphere. The paper proposes scaling up the constructed index to a broader sample of countries in order to clarify the regional disposition of forces in the global geopolitical space.

The paper investigates the phenomenon of institutional erosion, which is understood as a decrease in the effectiveness of institutions due to the complication (or, conversely, simplification) of the economic system. Thus, the article substantiates and verifies a hypothesis regarding the impact of economic growth on the quality of institutions. We dwell upon the idea that the possibilities of preventing institutional erosion through timely reforms are limited. This is due to the emergence of institutional friction caused by resistance to reforms on the part of certain social groups and due to the rule of increasing damage. In addition, we consider the process of erosion of human capital under the influence of reforms in the context of cognitive and psychophysiological mechanisms. We put forward a basic and an extended version of the economic growth model that includes the effect of institutional erosion. We conduct computational experiments for the basic model, which made it possible to reveal the effect of economic overheating: a less intensive mode of investment in the long term turns out preferable compared to a more stressful mode of capital accumulation due to the gradual zeroing of the results of explosive growth. We describe the mechanism of degeneration of institutions (i.e., loss of the quality of institutions and the inversion of goals) caused by their internal dialectic. We discuss the significance of a new model of economic growth with institutional erosion for explaining the processes of both ascending and descending branches of social dynamics. We also give an interpretation of some important events of our time in the terms of the new theory.

The book considers objective principles, rules, laws, mechanisms and effects underlying the dynamics of recurrent change of global capital accumulation centers. The work reveals the fallacy of the concept of multipolarity and proves that the global geopolitical space is governed by the principle of monocentricity. The book aims to prove that today’s Russia possesses unique geopolitical advantages compared to all other nation–states, and can claim the role of a new center of capital and a new center of global activity. Based on a unified general scientific perspective, the author reveals many issues that have been overlooked in the current academic discourse: the emergence of the ideology of transhumanism, the functioning of the neo–colonialism system, features of hybrid wars, crystallization of the passionarity of the people, etc. The book can be useful to anyone interested in international relations and world politics.

This study examines how internal research and development (R&D), external knowledge acquisition, and R&D contracted with other companies interact in local and foreign–owned enterprises in post–communist economies. A large sample of firm–level data from the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) across 26 postcommunist countries (including European Union (EU) members and non–EU states of Eastern Europe, Caucasian countries, and Central Asian countries) and country–level data from the Global Innovation Index and the International Property Rights Index were used. The findings show that enterprises with majority foreign ownership are relatively more likely to acquire external R&D. We demonstrate that the R&D behavior of enterprises with majority foreign ownership and local firms are interrelated, that is, we find a synergy effect. According to the results, decisions on internal R&D and the purchase of external knowledge for enterprises with majority foreign ownership are similar to those of local firms. However, enterprises with foreign ownership contract R&D with other companies more often if local firms conduct internal R&D. These results indicate the presence of knowledge spillover and cross–learning effects in both types of enterprises in postcommunist countries. Finally, we find that the national innovation environment is not significant for the R&D intensity of enterprises with majority foreign ownership, which suggests their high dependence on the parent structures of multinational enterprises.

Based on the sociological surveys “Scientific Policy of Russia,” conducted in 2021 and 2022, widespread opinions in the scientific community regarding the external openness of Russian civil science are analyzed. It is noted that the sustainable vector of state policy to maintain a high level of integration of domestic science into the international scientific space was suddenly called into question after the start of the special military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The decades–long Western–oriented course of Russian science has formed strong support among researchers, which, as it turned out, is very difficult for scientists to abandon abruptly even in the new conditions. It has been established that the sanctions imposed against Russian science turned out to be quite painful, and their consequences can only be overcome in the long term.

The article considers the current state of economic science and the methodological contradictions accumulated in its depths. The central thesis is the paradox of science, according to which meeting all the strict criteria of scientificity does not allow the current economic knowledge to give an effective response to the challenges of modernity. In order to substantiate this paradox, four attributes of the scientific nature of economics have been considered: theoretical, observational, inductive (historical) and experimental. Seven groups of objective causes provoking the decline in the practical relevance of economics were investigated in parallel. The emergence of the paradox of science against the background of long–term failures of economic science in explaining and predicting the key events of modernity indicates that for over 30 years it has been in a global methodological deadlock, in which one can stay indefinitely, rather than in a crisis that is resolved sooner or later. Therefore, a new social science – socionomics – needs to be created. Such attempts have been repeatedly made, but failed. Consideration of the methodological features of tectology, cybernetics, general systems theory and synergetics allows us to understand the reasons for these failures: identifying systems of different nature and assuming the universality of the laws to which they obey. The article shows new attempts of interdisciplinary research in Russia aimed at revealing deep analogies between structural patterns in physics, chemistry, biology and informatics and spatio–temporal archetypes (hexagrams) in the Chinese “Book of Changes” (“I Ching”). The author has revealed the reasons why these studies do not lead to final success in spite of their obvious fruitfulness: “The Book of Changes” operates with content and form of the phenomenon, but not with its scale, which gives the illusion of accuracy, but does not allow to make practically significant calculations. The contours of a new science – socionomics – are outlined.

The article discusses mechanisms that are put into action during the hybrid war of civilizations that has unfolded at the present time. For this purpose, the concepts of two antagonistic megacivilizations – the West and the Non–West – have been introduced. We reveal the essence and genesis of the First and Second civilizational failures within Western civilization, reconstruct the anatomy of destruction of the national model of Russia’s social development after 1991 under the influence of the neocolonial governance system. We uncover and interpret the paradox of the lag in the development of the two megacivilizations, look into the genesis of the passionarity of the ethnos, and substantiate the primacy of geopolitical logic over economic logic. We provide an outlook of the current hybrid war between the West and the Non–West. The novelty of our approach consists in combining the knowledge of different sciences to explain social processes during the period of geopolitical turbulence. We look into philosophical phenomena (opposite dynamics of the material and spiritual spheres), cybernetic (full and partial cybernetic inversions), historical (birth of ethnic passionarity), political (hybrid wars), biological (neuroplasticity of the brain), cultural (cultural plasticity of civilization), economic (world currency, phenomenon of superprofits) factors. This made it possible to correlate objective and subjective factors in the confrontation between the two megacivilizations. The main conclusion of the study is that neither the West (USA) nor the Non–West (Russia) has clear advantages in the unfolding hybrid war of civilizations. The tactical superiority of the West is opposed to the strategic superiority of the Non–West; this situation does not allow us to make unambiguous predictions about the future winner.

The article deals with the problem of identifying world–class universities (WCU) on the basis of information provided by various ranking systems. The relevance of the problem is due to the fact that in 2022 Russia was “cut off” from the world community, including the interruption of cooperation with leading international ranking universities, so the country risks losing the opportunity to self–check its successes and failures by generally recognized criteria. In this regard, the purpose of this article is hypothesis verification that the “friendly” ranking of ARWU base can serve as an effective substitute for the “unfriendly” OS ranking base. To test the formulated hypothesis, we used the previously developed algorithm for identifying WCU using statistical data from the five Global University Rankings – Ouacquarelli Symonds (OS), Times Higher Education (THE), Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) and National Taiwan University Ranking (NTU) – and two University Rankings by subject – OS and ARWU. Conducted calculations disproved the general hypothesis and revealed a fundamental inconsistency of results obtained on the basis of different rankings. In addition, by the example of the ARWU, a profound contradiction in the logic of compiling the GUR and the SRU was uncovered. That raises a broader question about adequacy of the concept of the WCU itself. To answer this question, we conducted a “humanitarian test” for the validity of modern WCU, which showed the presence of elementary illiteracy and lack of culture among graduates of advanced universities. Collected stylized examples allowed to establish that modern world market leaders’ universities do not pass the “humanitarian test”, and therefore the entire rating system cannot be considered a reliable basis for conclusions about the activities of universities. The question of replacing the term WCU with a less pretentious “product” category – practice–oriented universities – is being discussed.

The paper investigates a set of factors contributing to Russia’s transformation into a new world capital accumulation center in the next two to three decades. The novelty of our approach lies in the fact that we consider the current phase of global geopolitical turbulence through the prism of the capital accumulation cycles theory in order to determine the vector of future development of the world economic system. We dig into the topic by forming a comprehensive picture of Russia’s potential advantages that are quite versatile. Thus, we look into the following phenomena: geographical (ice decline in the Russian Arctic; Russia evolving from a land power into a sea power; natural resources endowment), philosophical (dialectical confrontation of homogeneity and heterogeneity of the world system), historical (syndrome of false contender for the role of a world capital accumulation center; passionarity of the ethnos), political (parade of sovereignties and imperial revanchists, diffusion of the nuclear syndrome, legitimization of the struggle against political and managerial opposition), political economy (cycles of capital accumulation; world capital accumulation center; Russia’s economy joining the world system of capitalism), economic (effectiveness of international economic sanctions; general–purpose technologies; industry cycles; regulatory and technology triads), demographic (demographic curse), cultural (openness of the Russian Civilization to immigrants, its civilizing experience in relation to other peoples, high civilizational absorption), military (latent and active phases of hybrid warfare; hybrid warfare paradox), factors and management effects (autonomous and authoritarian management, hegemon and leader models). This helped us to reconstruct the system of checks and balances formed around the Russian Federation in the hybrid warfare between the West and the Non–West. We deepen the analysis by providing our own interpretation of sea states and land states. The main conclusion of the research is that Russia possesses unique geopolitical advantages that allow it to successfully counteract the Collective West and eventually become a new leader of the world economic system.