NATIONAL DIVERSITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN RUSSIAN REGION

Abstract

The paper discusses the impact of national diversity on economic development and presents a detailed review of foreign studies, which serves as a basis for the formulation of testable hypotheses. The ethnic structure of the Russian regions population is analyzed based on the censuses data for 2002 and 2010; the fractionalization index, entropy and polarization indexes are used. The analysis of these characteristics shows that, despite the more active migration processes in modern Russia, there have been no major changes in the ethnic composition of the population of the regions. At the same time, a wide variety of the national structures is observed in the regions. The impact of the national heterogeneity on economic development is estimated using regression analysis. We run panel regression of the regional value added on labor, capital, control variables, and on the indexes of the national heterogeneity. The results showed: 1) the absence of noticeable changes in the national structure in the observed period; 2) the positive impact of ethnic diversity on economic development; 3) the absence of a statistically significant relationship between the ethnic polarization and development.

Keywords

• национальная структура
• разнообразие
• поляризация
• экономическое развитие
• Россия
• регион
• national structure
• diversity
• polarization
• economic development
• Russia
• region