In the article the firm is considered as: a) the aggregate of individuals who have concluded contracts with the employer; b) an independent economic entity; c) the element of the national economy complex. Within the framework of these three approaches to the essence of a firm, the object of research is the behavior of the firm as a producing system, as a subject of management and the institution of society. The article consists of two parts. In the first part of the article the firm is considered as a production facility, in connection with which a brief description of the basic theories of the firm reflecting the influence of intra-production factors on the behavior of the enterprise is given. The approaches connected with agent-oriented modeling, variants of the neoclassical theory, J. Forrester's theory of industrial dynamics are disclosed. The agent-oriented approach makes it possible to link the actions of agents-individual participants in the economic activities of an enterprise-into a single whole. The expanded application of agent-based modeling also allows reflecting the influence on the firm of decisions taken by individuals outside the personal of employees or owners of the firm. The neoclassical approach is based on the notion of the firm as an independent, purposeful system that pursues the goal of maximizing a fixed criterion of optimality (rationality) of behavior. Such a criterion may reflect the interests of owners, managers or employees of the firm. A certain combination of similar criteria is also possible. The principle of optimality is often criticized, but it gives an opportunity, firstly, to describe the results of various processes within the enterprise in the most capacious form and, secondly, to ensure the study of the enterprise as a holistic economic phenomenon. For neoclassical models, the assumption of complete awareness and perfect rationality of persons making decisions concerning the behavior of an enterprise is characteristic. The main task of J. Forrester's theory is the analysis of the influence of the dynamic characteristics of the processes and structure of the enterprise on the results of its production activity. Management in the model is represented as a process associated with the formation and transformation of material and information flows.

The analytical review of definition of the concept “family entrepreneurship” of the Russian authors is presented in article. A number of the main tendencies in modern domestic researches of family business’ institute are given. It is established that a considerable part of scientific works in the sphere of a modern domestic family entrepreneurship’s research is concentrated directly on a perspective of transfer mechanisms of family enterprise to successors. It is defined that the lack of domestic family entrepreneurship’ basic researches is caused by natural closeness of the Russian family companies. Also as the reason of poor development of the theory of domestic family entrepreneurship and researches devoted to definitions of family entrepreneurship seems existence of the significant historical gaps leading to loss of historical and social experience of conducting entrepreneurship activity. On the basis of a research of a family entrepreneurship phenomenon the conclusion is drawn that its development depends on coordinate actions of family firms’ owners, the state and scientists. The hypothesis that the Russian family enterprises are faced by a problem of achievement of reference to small entrepreneurship entities criteria today is made. The entity of family entrepreneurship as diversities of enterprise activity’s forms of the close relatives on the basis of their family capital is defined. It is established that a certain structure can be referred to the subject family entrepreneurship at preservation in its framework of the following fundamental components: family property, continuity of generations and family management. It is defined that development of a uniform, system concept of institute “family entrepreneurship” requires legislative fixing of its functioning fact in the territory of the Russian Federation.

A foreign experience of using economic indicators to predict economic crises and improve economic situation is regarded as useful for improving the forecasting system and for the enhancement of Russian economic security. Theoretical criteria and practical arguments being analyzed to apply indicators at different periods of economic development in changing economic dynamics. The evolution of application of such indicators in U.S. and in European countries is shown as well as the selection of the target indicator of economic dynamic. Four groups of economic variables are shown in this paper as the indicators of economic cycle change. The paper identifies situations when specific indicators show inefficiency which questioning the possibility of using indicators for forecasting. The existing views on such situations are shown and presented the further research directions with the specificity of various periods of technological development.

The article discusses the trends in the development of property relations due to changes in technological methods of production, the changing role of factors of production, in particular, the increase in the role of the human factor in modern conditions. The increasing role of man as an active subject of economic activity is reflected in his place in the relations of property. Traditional for the previous stages of development of social production division into “owners” and “non-owners” goes back to the past, conceding to distribution of powers of property in various combinations between all participants of economic activity. At the same time, modern transformations of property involve a significant revision of the conceptual apparatus used in the process. According to the author, currently loses its meaning such a thing as “form of ownership”, and more accurately reflects the current trends in the development of property relations is the concept of “ownership regime”, since the real content of property as appropriation is determined not by the fact of formal belonging of the object to the “title” owner, but by the real distribution of ownership rights in relation to the object of property between a number of economic entities, which are the “title” owners, managers, individual employees, etc., taking into account the interests of which becomes a necessary condition for the efficiency of economic activity. With this in mind, it is proposed to use the concept of the “distributed property” regime as a concept that most accurately reflects the modern processes taking place in property relations in the process of transition from hierarchical to heterarchic organization of economic processes. The latter means the regime of ownership, in which the powers of ownership are distributed among a number of economic entities in such a way that none of them can decide on the fate of the object without the consent of others.

Global value chains (GVCs) are key characteristic of the development of the modern economy at the present period. The integration of the national economy to the GVCs may be used as an effective instrument for its modernization and effectiveness increase. In this paper the effects in the economy integrating into the GVCs are analyzed. The author’s approach to the classification of these effects is based on structuring the different forms of companies’ integration into the global value chains. In the paper the effects of shifting production stages to the economy as well as the effects of shifting production stages off the economy are distinguished. The first type of the effects is associated with foreign direct investment, the second type – with offshoring and international outsourcing. In both cases direct and indirect effects as well as inter-industry and intra-industry effects could be identified. Based on the existing empirical research we generalize the effects of foreign direct investment and international outsourcing and offshoring. We outline the instruments of the government policy that will increase benefits and decrease losses of integrating of the national economy into the global value chains. To increase effectiveness and competitiveness of the national economy in the context of its integrating into the GVCs the active national policy should be conducted in the following fields: stimulating foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, growth of foreign trade, increase in the quality of the human capital, promoting competition in the local market, raising national firms’ productivity, effective spatial location of the firms in the economy, and regulating of the migration flows.

Proposed the main classification of technologies by types, which together with the research of the life cycle of technology allows expanding the notion of the processes of technological changes. Technology is considered an institution (a set of rules) that has a high coercive power, which sets the mode of development of the economic system that uses this set of technologies. And the stage of the life cycle determines the type of technologies used, affects the further processes of replacing old technologies with new technologies, and the emergence of new technologies (displacement, addition, coupling). The conditions and factors of technology competitiveness (including their main types) are considered. One of the most important regularities of technological progress is the supporting technological base, although there are exceptions when, with the general technological backwardness, the country acquires and introduces modern (advanced technologies) that have a positive effect on its development. However, such an outcome is the exception rather than the rule. In addition to new technologies, the state of the so-called old technologies will be limiting in the field of technological development, which should be taken into account in the framework of ongoing development programs. The influence of the technology structure on the rate of growth of the economic system is shown in the framework of the neo-noise technology approach. Therefore, the policy should take into account the effects of resource allocation between different directions. The purpose of the article was to show the typology of technologies in relation to the life cycle, to describe the factors of competitiveness in these types and to show the influence of the technological structure on the dynamics of the economy.

The aim of this article is to consider sectoral and regional peculiarities of transformation of Russian business in the conditions of transition to the digital economy. To achieve the objectives of the study used a systematic approach that allows to identify and to establish the common economic space of doing business by large Russian companies, and also regional features of the transition to a digital economy. Application of the method relies on a representative database, published and presented in the Internet sources, which ensured the representativeness of the study results, the validity of assessments the validity of the conclusions of the article. The approach implemented in the article aimed at establishing the specifics of individual businesses, somewhat overlooked by researchers. We are talking about the peculiarities of development of large corporations that are the typical objects of the meso-levels, are economic activities of different types, as well as so-called “smart cities”, the formation of which is especially important for the digital economy. Russian corporations actively use various innovations associated with IT. Transformation of Russian business in the industry aspect is manifested in the change of business models, creating new formats of business; inter-sectoral cooperation, based on active IT using; providing innovative development; innovative horizontal diversification, including through the acquisition of innovative (IT) startups; and the application of “lean production: with IT. The evaluation of costs and effects of the introduction of “smart cities” in Russia is accomplished. The main problems of implementing the tools of the digital economy in Russia are identified. The results of the study have practical significance for the public authorities; large enterprises and organizations of various sectors that implement investment and innovative development strategy in specific regions of the country.

The paper attempts measuring institutional change as compared to structural change. I take the case of the Russian banking industry in 1991–2016. I put forward a set of metrics featuring the actors broken down by ownership form (stateowned vs. private banks) and the resources that each bank category commands. Another set of metrics features the regime and modality of banking according to certain norms. These latter are quantified via the performance of key banking functions with regard to the rest of the economy, the relevance of banking for the economy and its contribution to social welfare. At the first stage, the communist-era credit system falls apart, and so do coordination mechanisms between monetary and real sectors of the economy. After the 1998 crisis, evolution goes in the direction of greater government involvement in banks and centralized allocation of financial resources. Banks become more committed to their core business of financing the real economy. The performance of state-owned banks improves whereas that of privately owned banks deteriorates. Structural change has not yet led to a substantially different way of functioning of the banking industry, according to pattern recognition methodology. A state-owned bank acts mainly under the guidance of its management rather than the government, and pursues profitability. The contribution of this paper is that it tackles the interplay between structural and institutional change and tries to quantify both of them in a particular economic sector.

Replacing the task of optimizing the technological chain “production – consumption of energy” with maximizing the profit of each of its participants led to an imbalance in the development of the energy power. As a result of the excess construction of new energy capacities, the efficiency of its operation is decreasing. In addition to the growth of the investment component, this leads to a multiplicative effect of increasing the cost of electricity due to an increase in the fuel consumption, the number of starts and stops, and the share of fixed costs. In turn, the growth of electricity prices in the long term leads to the replacement of national products by imports. As a result, construction of new energy power stations does not lead to the growth of labor productivity, which was the main goal of electrification, but causes inhibition of economic development and reduction of electricity consumption. The article substantiates the expediency of considering the number of hours of using the installed capacity as a controlling parameter of energy development, in contrast to the construction volume of power capacities. Aligning the load schedule by coordinating production processes at the consumers will reduce the need for peak energy sources. The transformation from satisfying the energy demand to its formation will make possible to integrate renewable energy into the energy system with minimal costs.

Although the economic science has the largest quantity of defended dissertations, in practice the national economics shows not very satisfying results of its development. This situation indirectly shows low quality of dissertational research and weak demand on their results. Having an aim to overcome this unpleasant situation the Russian Ministry of Science and Educational makes a grand reformation of systems provided with expertise of dissertational research and scientific employees attestation. The Ministry establishes higher demands to members of dissertational councils, optimizes quantity of these councils in the aspects of scientific specialties and regions, establishes stricter regulations for the procedures of preparing, primary expertise and defense of dissertations. Besides the Ministry establishes higher publicity of dissertational researches: it increases minimal quantity of a postdoc’s scientific publications provided with a topic of his dissertation, as well as a degree of publications’ connection with the thesis planned to be defended. Dissertation and there short thesis accepted to defense by a dissertational council should be compulsory opened to general public. The procedure of expertise of dissertational documents in Higher Attestation Commission is also being improved. But these changes have formal character and don’t change contentions of the problem. Scientific and practical use of dissertational researches is still very low, and dissertational activities as a whole aren’t useful for development of innovational economy. In aim to find a way of solving these problems and provide a wished mainstream of perspective economic research, in the present article we prove necessity of reforming contents in the economic science’s classification. From this point of view, we analyze the present system of scientific specialties established by Higher Attestation Commission. We project contours of its’ wished configuration in near perspective and offer the scenery of movement from one state to another. As a result, we offer to increase number of economic scientific specialties from six to eight, as well as change radically the content of their passports.

The article examines the specifics and history of the formation of entrepreneurial ethics in pre-revolutionary Russia, as well as its transformations in the course of Russian revolutions, in the Soviet era during the New Economic Policy period. Research embraces the transformations in cooperative/ artel types of business at a later stage, in the “shadow” system of private entrepreneurship, and finally, in the times of the late Soviet and post-Soviet reforms. It is shown that several stages of breaking the mass ethical norm “at the turns of the epochs” – could not but lead to serious destruction of the moral oriented basis of life in all social groups and in all strata of society. It is shown, that the «turns of the epochs» caused lasting and painful fractures between the outward normality of the state (the norms of written law) and the internal normality of citizens, communities and society (mass morality and the “customary law”). It is shown, that during the Soviet period, in the process of organizing economic life, authorities largely relied on the successive moral community specificity of mass self-awareness, including community forms of collective encouragement and punishment, as well as on religious ethical precepts transformed in the terminology of communism. It is established, that the late Soviet and post-Soviet so called “market” transformations of economic legislation, the purposeful discrediting of mass normative and ethical views of the Soviet era, as well as illegal and fraudulent privatization of substantial part of Soviet public property, led to deep chaos in the entire Russian institutional and regulatory system that ensures economic activity and social sustainability. It is shown, that this creates serious obstacles to the successful development of Russian statehood.