A study of labor in economic theory has taken an important place until the beginning of the XXI century. The comprehension of labor as a factor of production within the framework of the neoclassical paradigm and the basis of society in the Marxist paradigm led to a contradiction between the creation of economic benefits and the preservation of the world in which a human exists. There has been a need to interpret human activity to explain the influence of economic processes on the external world since the idea of labor in economics does not solve such problems. Economic activity was reviewed by scientists as an act towards a society. At the same time, the theory of activity emphasizes the importance of activity as an object of research and the intentions of people as factors influencing it. It is concluded that in economics it is necessary to consider a human as a part of nature and to investigate his relationship which pursues economic benefits with the elements of nature. The content of economic activity is reviewed in the article and it is concluded that economic activity includes idealization and changing the state of the external world. Idealization is the basis for the cognition of economic phenomena by economic agents and an important method of cognition in modern economics. It anticipates all acts of activity of economic agents, therefore, an understanding of the values that exist in society as a factor that forms an awareness of economic reality. A teleological approach was used in determining of economic activity and the need to study economic reality and to build economic models with a preliminary account of the goal of creating an economic system for the development of humanity in the future was emphasized. The unity of the relationship of a person with other people and nature and the study of it from the standpoint of the possibilities of harmonious and long-term interaction is the basis for the development of socio-economic activity. An important role for the formation of objective knowledge and goals of human activity is played by the economists’ comprehension of the research’s results in the field of philosophy.

The paper proposes and tests a method for constructing modified functions of labor demand and supply, designed for the analysis of the economy at the macrolevel. Methodological difficulties in constructing these functions are determined by the fact that when considering the labor market at the macro level, in principle, there is no possibility to operate with a series of observations related to a single point in time. Due to this circumstance, it is proposed to define the functions under consideration as regression equations constructed on the basis of dynamic series. The argument of both functions is the average monthly real accrued salary. The value of the supply function is the level of economic activity of the population. This indicator can be interpreted as the amount of work offered for a certain wage by an average representative of the population group in question during the year, expressed in the proportion of a person/year. The value of the demand function is the labor intensity of production, calculated as a quotient of the division of the number of employed by the real gross domestic product. This indicator can be interpreted as the amount of labor demand expressed in person/years by employers producing real value-added products in a certain fixed (depending on the selected units of measurement) volume per year. The article briefly discusses non-paid factors affecting the values of the level of economic activity of the population and the labor intensity. The functions of labor demand and supply are constructed for the Russian economy on the basis of the official statistical information for the period 2001–2014. The modified labor supply function turned out to be linear, and was characterized by a very low elasticity over the time period under consideration. The modified labor demand function is defined as a decreasing power function. Based on the comparisons of the constructed functions, it can be concluded that employers who determine the demand for labor react to changes in wages much more intense than employees who determine the supply of labor.

The article deals with dynamics and differentiation of labor productivity and salary return in the Russian Federation in the period 2012–2020, as well as the relationship between these indicators. The study is based on Russian regional data published by Rosstat in the Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistical System (EMISS). The theoretical section of the article discusses the mechanisms responsible for the dynamics of labor productivity and salary return, as well as for the correlation between these indicators, including technological development, the sectoral structure of the regional economy and local labor market characteristics. Calculations have shown that both labor productivity and salary return in the regions of Russia in the period under review have positive dynamics and significant regional variation. However, most of this variation is due to the presence of four regions in which the studied indicators show levels several times higher than the values in the bulk of the regions: Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Sakhalin Oblast. In our opinion, the leadership of these regions is due to the predominance of the extractive industry in their sectoral structure, characterized by a high level of capital intensity and a low level of labor intensity. The analysis of the number of employed and the number of hours worked shows a negative trend and a significant variation by region, which can serve as a factor of high interregional differentiation of labor productivity and salary return. Correlation analysis of the average over the period of labor productivity and salary return indicates the absence of a significant relationship between the studied indicators when excluding atypical observations from the analysis.

The structural possibilities of the Russian economy are considered in order to determine its structural possibilities. The study is based on a systematic approach using the method of statistical and neural network analysis. The article shows the limited structural capacity of the Russian economy by a highly concentrated commodity market. Also, high values of the growth rate of turnover of organizations producing vehicles and equipment, as well as computers, electronic and optical products were established. The paper notes a significant increase in investments at the expense of the population and the budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the face of a significant decrease in loans from foreign banks and investments from abroad. A high concentration of the Russian market in raw materials was established – ​mining and enrichment of iron ores; production of coke and oil products; mining of non-ferrous metal ores, etc. The position of the government of the Russian Federation as a net creditor, stimulating the emergence of organizations related to state administration and military security, and dooming the activities of households to liquidation is highlighted. The presented studies develop the competence of members of the Russian government in assessing the structural possibilities of economic growth and the choice of methods and directions of development. It is shown that the structural possibilities of the Russian economy, limited by a highly concentrated commodity market and the government's position as a net creditor, orient the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to stimulate the activity of development institutions.

The paper discusses the assessment of the contribution of scientific and technological progress to the real gross domestic product (GDP) of Russia. The instrument of this assessment is the production function of the national economy. The paper presents two variants of the production function of the Russian economy, which have successfully passed all the diagnostic procedures adopted in econometrics. In the first variant, the index of scientific and technological progress (STP) is included in the set of explanatory factors such as the level of fixed capital, the amount of live labor, the price of oil, the indicator of Russia's default, the Global Financial Crisis and sanctions of Western countries. In the second variant of the production function, there is no NTP index. The scheme of construction of the production function consists of two stages. At the first stage of the scheme, statistical models of the production function are evaluated with mandatory testing of the hypothesis of the cointegration of non-stationary time series of logarithms of Russia's GDP levels, fixed capital and living labor levels and oil price levels. At the second stage of the scheme, the stability of estimates of the production function calculated from different training samples was investigated, and the accuracy of ex-post forecasting was estimated. At the second stage of the production function construction scheme, the model with the NTP index showed higher accuracy of post-factum forecasting. This circumstance, combined with the result of testing the statistical hypothesis about the presence of scientific and technological progress in the Russian economy, made it possible to assess its contribution to real GDP: other things being equal, scientific and technological progress increases the annual real GDP of Russia by about 0,6%.

The article describes the barriers to the investment activity of Chinese companies in the energy sector of the Russian Federation, as well as the prospects for further cooperation based on the results of an empirical study conducted by the author of the article. Research method: qualitative content analysis. The study observed the activities of 36 Chinese companies carrying out their investment and entrepreneurial activities in Russia. As a result of the study, it turned out that the main barriers to investment are the low efficiency of the work of the administrative bodies of the Russian Federation, the imperfection of Russian legislation, the monopoly in the energy industry and the low level of political trust between peoples / the states. However, despite the existing barriers, Chinese companies expressed the desire to further cooperation and suggested areas for improving the investment climate in the Russian Federation.

Modern processes of industrial changes in the economy are characterized by a high rate of innovation in production. This is especially true for high-tech sectors of the economy where competition is very high and is largely determined by global corporations and markets. Resourcing and the formation of forward-looking areas of activity through the searching and finding a balance in the use of limited resources by management in the process of innovative development of the enterprise predetermined the need to develop a long-term strategy for the enterprise. The article concludes that the processes of innovative and technological development of high-tech enterprises are possible only with the appropriate corporate culture and teamwork of personnel involved in development projects. Alignment of goals and objectives during the process of strategic development of a high-tech enterprise requires consideration of innovation cycles and trends of the global economy. This can be realized only within the framework of long-term resource planning and the formation of the innovative potential of personnel with unique competencies.

The cross-border nature of the spatial development of economically and socially significant regions identified in the geospace of the largest federal states of the modern world necessitates their study from the standpoint of the mesoeconomics of development as complex, open and dynamic systems in space-time. The object of this study is the cross-border regions of the United States with Mexico and Canada, which are distinguished by a characteristic set of specific properties of both system-structural and socio-economic nature. According to the systemic economic theory, the identified cross-border regions of the United States show the principle of duality of spatial development, and within the framework of evolutionary theory – ​a specific “socio-economic genotype” of the territory. Using elements of mesoeconomic modeling, the author identified and substantiated some trends in the spatial development of different groups of cross-border regions of the United States over a long time period of 1970–2020 and as a forecast until 2030. Based on a comparative analysis carried out on the results of modeling and testing, the author's hypothesis about a multidirectional change in the dynamics of indicators of socio-economic spatial development, which depends on the regional features of the spatiotemporal evolution of specific transboundary territories, is confirmed – ​as socio-economic systems of the mesolevel. The obtained results, revealing the spatial dependence of the data, indicate the growth of spatial relationships of both social and economic nature within the studied cross-border regions of the United States, which determine the spatiotemporal evolution of the latter in the geoeconomic and geocultural space of the United States and neighboring states. Based on the results of mesoeconomic modeling, the existence of an evolutionary-cyclical nature and duality of the studied mesosystems is empirically confirmed, having their own socio-economic genotype of territories, depending on the insurmountable specifics of spatial diversity and unevenness in the conditions of the market organization of American society. The main conclusion is that regional interest, which has dialectical unity and variability, manifested over time, causes different directions and levels of spatial development of specific regions of the United States as integral dynamic and open socio-economic systems of the mesoterritorial level, reflecting the gradual increase in economic regionalization. The approach used, taking into account the specifics of spatial development, is of interest for the study of similar subject issues in relation to large federal states that have a transboundary nature of genetically determined socio-economic interaction.