Improving Approaches to Implementing Regional Development Strategy based on Reducing Intra-Regional Differentiation

The heterogeneity of economic space is its natural property. At the same time, high levels of inequality can become a threat to the integrity of the socio-economic system and cause its slower development. In this regard, the problem of uneven spatial development is relevant for spatially extended economies (both national and regional) and is reflected in strategic planning documents. This article is devoted to the issues of spatial development of the largest subject of the Russian Federation – the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), – whose socio-economic development strategy notes increased intra-regional differentiation and disunity of economic zones, which is classified as the main challenges to the spatial development of the region. At the same time, this strategy does not highlight a list of measures to reduce the difference in the level of development of municipal districts, and also does not indicate the consequences of the implementation of the activities and projects planned by the strategy in the context of the spatial development of the region and its unevenness. In this paper in the context of municipal districts, an assessment was made of the effects of the implementation of large investment projects in the mining sector, which, according to the development strategy of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), will remain the main source of economic growth in the region. The study was conducted using a regional intersectoral model taking into account multiplier effects and spatial heterogeneity. Based on the obtained estimates, it is shown that the implementation of raw materials projects can cause an increase in intra-regional differentiation of economic development. The possibility of shrinking the economic space of the region in the absence of measures to equalize imbalances is noted. As a compensatory mechanism for the spatial heterogeneity of effects, an increase in the localization of effects from the implementation of these projects in various areas (localization of production, employment, redistribution of the part of the rent withdrawn from the extractive sector to the tasks of spatial development of the region) is considered.

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