The article is devoted to the construction and analysis of the simplest mathematical model illustrating the Giffen’s effect and the reasons and conditions for its manifestation. We analyse erroneous, but widely spread, ideas about Giffen’s goods as a good, the demand for which grows due to its relative cheapening against the rising prices for all consumed goods. Under the model it is shown that any good can be both valuable and of little value, at least if it has a more expensive substitute. This property is not an intrinsic and inalienable property of one or another good. The certain property is given to any good by a specific consumer due to its personal preferences and under the influence of existing prices. Inferior good, including such, the consumption of which is available only to an individual with a high level of income, may turn out to be a product of Giffen. Therefore, the consumption of Giffen goods cannot be considered as evidence of a low standard of living for the consumer. Because of the solution of the standard task on the consumer choice, it is shown that the increase in demand for an inferior good when its price is growing, which is the essence of the Giffen paradox, is the result of optim. It is shown that for the manifestation of the Giffen effect it is necessary that the amount of funds allocated by the consumer for acquiring low value good and its more expensive substitute gets into a certain rather narrow range of values.

The idea of a noosphere for the first time formulated in V. Vernadsky's works in the 1940s in the recent years attracts attention of participants of the different trends of scientific search as it has the considerable hidden potential in a research of modern transformations. The creator of a noosphere – the Humanity, presented as the powerful geological force allocated with consciousness, getting to know and transforming the Nature itself is involved in deep transformations many results of which are unexpected for him and bring him problems and additional obligations. Effective implementation of informative opportunities of the idea of a noosphere assumes expansion of space of scientific search and overcoming cross-disciplinary borders. At the focus of research of authors: representation of a noosphere as the system endowed with the energy which generate other types of energy and involved in the difficult process of transformation of energy proceeding in space; structure of a noosphere and its basic components; a problem of responsibility of the Humanity in all its subject forms by results of activity, including, responsibility in its noosphere scale, creation of adequate mechanisms of implementation of such responsibility in the conditions of forming of the global market. The chimeric entities and the anti-systems accompanying them arise in the movement of a noosphere. Through the optics of the idea of a noosphere authors consider key problem nodes and contradictions of modern conversions, estimate the effects arising at the different levels of these processes, offer applied means for a solution of the tasks rising here. Article provides recommendations on upgrading the state policy in social and economic transformations. The authors’ results belong to one of the new and perspective directions of cross-disciplinary scientific search that causes essential novelty and the debatable nature of the provisions presented in article, conclusions and recommendations. During the research heuristic resources of a number of modern scientific theories were used: biospheres, passionarity, cognitive economy, social and economic transformations, human capital, ecology, etc.

Based on the theory of noonomy developed by S. D. Bodrunov, the author covers the possibilities of its use in studying a range of issues addressed under the Marxist paradigm, in particular when it comes to creative, universal labor. The author demonstrates an abiding role of labor in the economic development. The paper reveals changes of the creative worker place, role and value caused by modern technological transformations. The author delves into the need of addressing the social utility of creative labor and importance of studying its value in use. The paper presents the author's vision of the dynamics of the new forms of personal production factor development in a context of increasing importance of knowledge and competence.
It is known that the labor subject is gradually transformed from a tool for material assets creation into the goal and condition of its own enlarged reproduction and qualitative internal improvement as the society shifts to a higher stage of technological development. As a result, the worker that mostly operates a highly intelligent creative element in his activity starts restructuring the existing relations system with the capital owner.
This leads to the assumption that the new form of participation allows a creative worker to get back the self-organization property and self-sufficiency of the labor process which he had lost meanwhile restoring an almost equal negotiation power in course of interaction with capital. This gives grounds for firm background for the situation when the creative labor unit, on the one hand, and the capital owner, on the other, start to interact as partners and coworkers. But because the hired labor of the creative worker still prevails in the framework of the capitalist market system, it is at least premature to debate about the rapid overcoming of the economic dependence of labor on capital.

The article presents the process of globalization, i.e. “the growing interdependence between nations” as a superposition of particular elements of mutual dependence of nations over the past several thousand years. Four waves of globalization, following one another, namely – trade, financial, industrial and innovation globalization are presented. The main features of innovation globalization are indicated: 1) increasing the degree of research internationalization in the natural and technical sciences, 2) transfer abroad of research and development units by the large international corporations, 3) active purchase of promising technologies and prototypes of new products and processes for their production together with their developers, that is, the purchase of companies that have created prototypes of promising products or technologies (startups); 4) a growing stream of “reverse innovations” – when innovations are created in foreign manufacturing units of multinational corporations, often while implementing joint projects with other firms. It is indicated that all these phenomena are observed in Russia. Recommendations are given in the field of strategies of industrial corporations on the more active involvement of Russia in global innovation processes: 1) the participation of the Russian firms in creation of new industrial enterprises in the developed countries in cooperation with local companies; 2) the purchase of domestic and foreign startups that have developed the most promising technologies in the new areas; 3) expanding the circle of employees familiar with the most advanced production practices; 4) leasing at attractive rates of production and office space to foreign enterprises that own advanced technologies and forms of organization; 5) contract design and contract manufacturing abroad. It is concluded that these and other measures are capable of transferring Russian enterprises from an object to an active subject of the new wave of globalization.

The article is devoted to the economic analysis of conflicts related to the disposal of municipal solid waste. A wave of protests, both against garbage dumps and against the construction of incineration plants, overwhelmed Moscow suburbs in the summer of 2017. These protests are a form of environmental conflict and are well described by the theory of external effects. This theory allows us to identify and evaluate the real economic costs of various waste disposal options which the decision makers do not take into account. The article analyzes quantitative estimates of the external effects of the most common waste management methods – landfilling and incineration. It is shown that the distribution of external costs between the source of externalities and recipients forms an objective economic basis of “garbage conflicts”. These are important social markers of unsustainability. The concept of sustainable development requires a transition to a higher level in the hierarchy of waste management methods – the processing and reuse of waste, for which incineration is a competitor. Western countries imposed a moratorium on the construction of new incineration plants and strengthened modernization requirements to the remaining plants. Despite this fact the Russian government proposes a strategy based on outdated technologies of incineration. The environmental characteristics of these new plants are inferior to the Western ones. In this regard, we can expect only an increase in the protest activity of the population, which can be stopped only by developing a really science-based concept of solid waste management.

In order to prevent negative socio-economic trends, to predict the social consequences of decisions on the implementation of state policy in the development of single-industry territories, public authorities monitor the socio-economic situation in single-industry towns based on an assessment of a number of statistical indicators. Such a differentiated assessment of statistical parameters does not allow a comprehensive assessment of the level of development and competitiveness of a single-industry town by territory, which is of particular relevance in modern conditions of glocalization. Of particular scientific and practical interest is a comparative analysis of the level of development of single-industry towns on the basis of an integral indicator that takes into account aspects of various spheres of life of the population and allows an objective assessment of the competitive positions of single-industry territories, which is currently not used by state authorities for monitoring. The purpose of the work is to assess and justify the conditions and development trends of single-industry towns of the Samara region on the basis of calculating the integral indicator of competitiveness, taking into account the level of development of the economy, finance, employment, social security and demography, as well as the mono-profile level of territories. In this study, we used the methods of system analysis, the method of comparisons and analogies, the method of generalization, the methods of dialectic and statistical analysis, the method of expert estimates, the method of retrospective estimates and structural-dynamic analysis. The paper provides an overview of the single-industry towns of the regions of the Volga Federal District; the results of testing the methodology for assessing the competitiveness of single-industry towns of the Samara region on the basis of an integral indicator are presented and trends in its change in the period 2013–2017 are identified. The study involved four single-industry towns of the Samara region: Oktyabrsk, Pohvistnevo, Tolyatti, Chapaevsk. The calculations showed that For five years Oktyabrsk was an outsider in four of the six areas under study (economics, labor, social services, demography), which led to the lowest competitiveness index and allowed us to identify the competitiveness of a single-industry town as “below average”. In relatively equal socio-economic conditions, there were Pohvistnevo, Togliatti and Chapaevsk, the level of competitiveness of which is “above average”.

This research studies the relationship of cross-border mergers and acquisitions to international trade through the lens of Russian pharmaceutical market. To this aim, the study analyses the woks of foreign economists dedicated to evaluating the link between foreign direct investment and international trade, and the influence of mergers and acquisitions on countries’ export and import flows. The research also presents a correlation analysis between the volume of Russian pharmaceutical exports and imports and cross-border deals performed by foreign pharmaceutical companies in Russia. We characterize these deals and conduct a comparative analysis of the regional structure of Russian pharmaceutical exports and imports as well as of the countries of origin of buyers in cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The results of the analysis indicate a positive relationship between cross-border mergers and acquisitions and Russian pharmaceutical exports, which is reflected in the export volume growth and its geographical diversification. However, it is outlined that particular problems of the industry hinder the amelioration of Russian positions in international exports. Similarly, the relationship between cross-border deals and Russian imports is positive: the major pharmaceutical products supply flow occurs from the countries of origin of buyers in cross-border mergers and acquisitions conducted in the Russian pharmaceutical sector.

In the context of geopolitical cataclysms, the institutions of macroeconomic regulation of tactics and strategies for the development of large economic complexes under Federal ownership perform an important regulatory mission-to ensure the stable development of the Russian market space. The effectiveness of state and corporate measures for regulating financial and property control processes is determined, other things being equal, by the quality of accounting and analytical information generated from various sources. This means that the methodology and information support for control procedures should be based on a time-appropriate concept of accounting and control processes in the management system for the development of companies with state participation.
The article analyzes the positive and negative prerequisites for updating management systems and their information support for adapting the corporate financial and economic management system to new realities. Based on the analysis of the current situation and studying the experience of companies with state participation are formed the author's position updated “concept of accounting and control processes in the management system development of companies with state participation”, which are as follows: formulated new definitions of the terms in the context of methodology of development of accounting and control processes; the conditions for expanding information boundaries are defined by combining state financial control and internal corporate control, including in the methods of investigating the causes of financial discipline violations, methods of internal corporate control, corporate tax monitoring, and analysis control methods, which is facilitated by the current level of IT technology development and further digitalization of the economy. It is concluded that it is necessary to adopt a law on financial control for national purposes, which is still not available in the country's legal practice. This Law should contain an institutionally recognized and clearly defined term “financial control”, as well as features of control procedures at the national and corporate levels.

Improvement of procurement procedures and their digitization help prevent and identify cartels, but at the same time lead to the emergence of new anticompetitive schemes. In this paper we focus on electronic auctions, which have become the main method of public procurement in Russia in recent years. As e-auctions provide access to many big government orders; the incentives for bidders to join anti-competitive agreements are increased. Therefore, the development of methods to detect bid rigging at electronic auctions is of high practical importance. The aim of this work was to develop a method for detecting signs of horizontal collusion at an auction. We use machine learning methods to train classifiers that predict the presence or absence of cartel in electronic auctions, depending on the distribution of bidders, the time of submission of applications, the duration of the auction and the number of participants. Variables for the model were selected on the basis of distribution plots built for sample of cartels and random sample. The study is based on data from public procurement Web portal and the information about bid rigging from cases of the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The results showed that the Random forest model most accurately predicts the detection of the cartels on electronic auctions. The accuracy of the prediction is 84%, and the recall and precision of the model are 83 and 87%, respectively. The most significant variables for the classification are the level of price reduction, the difference in the time of application filing of participants and the value of the maximum starting price of contract.

On the base of the survey in two universities in Voronezh (680 students) the hypothesis is rejected that students, in accordance with J. Schumpeter's interpretation of entrepreneurial activity, associate entrepreneurship with innovations. It is found that the student's perception of entrepreneurship in the Russian cultural and linguistic environment differs from the Schumpeterian one. Although the inclination to joining entrepreneurship in the future is widespread among the students, they are not ready to innovate. Students perceive entrepreneurship primarily as a pathway to financial security and personal well-being. Respondents tend to neglect socially significant aspects of entrepreneurship.
It is revealed that the students miss a holistic system of views and priorities regarding to their careers. Personal interests and motivations prevail over business inclinations. This is expressed in the students' career preferences, which incline to the ability to combine business and personal life, to the pursuit of financial security, material well-being, avoiding difficulties. As a rule, students prefer interesting and creative work. Hard work and education as factors of success in their future professional careers are valued low.
At the same time, weak social inclinations are manifested. Mutual assistance and cooperation as factors of professional progress are rated low. Also, the students are not inclined to work much and hard for the sake of public benefits. Prevailing not only personal interests as compared to the social, but even personal as compared to professional is an obstacle to the students joining the innovative entrepreneurship, requiring the priority of business and professional interests. The low interest to continuing family business reflects the young people's desire to independence, to free choice of path. This indirectly indicates their deviation from traditional values (which are considered to be characteristic of the Russian culture in the past) and about the growth of their individualism.

Nowadays the process of information accumulation is so rapid that the concept of the usual iterative search requires revision. Being in the world of oversaturated information in order to comprehensively cover and analyze the problem under study, it is necessary to make high demands on the search methods. An innovative approach to search should flexibly take into account the large amount of already accumulated knowledge and a priori requirements for results. The results, in turn, should immediately provide a roadmap of the direction being studied with the possibility of as much detail as possible. The approach to search based on topic modeling, the so-called topic search, allows you to take into account all these requirements and thereby streamline the nature of working with information, increase the efficiency of knowledge production, avoid cognitive biases in the perception of information, which is important both on micro and macro level. In order to demonstrate an example of applying topic search, the article considers the task of analyzing an import substitution program based on patent data. The program includes plans for 22 industries and contains more than 1,500 products and technologies for the proposed import substitution. The use of patent search based on topic modeling allows to search immediately by the blocks of a priori information – terms of industrial plans for import substitution and at the output get a selection of relevant documents for each of the industries. This approach allows not only to provide a comprehensive picture of the effectiveness of the program as a whole, but also to visually obtain more detailed information about which groups of products and technologies have been patented.