An  active  policy  of  digitalization  of  the  tax  administration  system  in  Russia  is  carried  out  with special  attention  to  the  automation  of  calculation  and  payment  of  taxes.  The  article  summarizes the domestic experience in this area, analyzes the features of tax legislation and regulation under which  these  reforms  are  implemented,  and  identifies  relevant  trends  and  their  prospects.  The results  of  the  analysis  make  it  possible  to  identify  the  opportunities  and  risks  of  development  of the Russian tax system in the context of its digitalization. Further automation of certain taxes (first of all, corporate and personal income taxes) will be associated with the need to overcome a large number  of  legal  imprecisions,  whereas  simplifying  the  design  of  taxes,  in  many  cases,  leads  to economic  distortions.  The  digital  innovations  that  have  already  been  introduced  are  intended  for small or large legal entities, thereby creating a significant bias in the complexity of tax regulation for other taxpayers. The article concludes that it is advisable to use the tool of preliminary filling and  verification  of  tax  returns  by  tax  authorities  as  a  direction  for  improving  the  system  of  tax administration in Russia. The transition to providing taxpayers with motivated opinions of the tax authorities (tax rulings) on certain types of economic transactions is promising as well. The authors also recommend implementing measures aimed at disclosing information about transactions that have signs of aggressive tax planning, according to the recommendations of the OECD. It is noted that the existing mechanisms for resolving tax disputes and legal standards for the protection of taxpayers’ rights will require transformation under increased transparency of business transactions for tax authorities.

During the past three decades, citizen involvement in the management of local budgets, also known as participatory budgeting (PB), has been getting popular across the world. However, there are no systematic studies devoted to the demand factors of this mechanism. Using the Heckman procedure (censored regression) and regional Russian data on projects implemented on the principles of PB, we reveal the significant factors for its further development. In particular, the probability of using PB turned out to be most sensitive to the development of the region’s economy, the PB implementation experience and the budget independence of the region. At the same time, the volume of PB projects is sensitive not only to the implementation experience and the budget independence, but also to the share of beneficiaries and the diversity degree of the PB sphere. The Heckman procedure avoids the econometric problems linked to the selection bias and, in addition, it makes it possible to study the influence of the same factor on the probability and volume of PB implementation. Further prospects for PB development in Russia depend on the next issues: ensuring greater social coverage through the  involvement  of  new  target  population  groups,  expanding  the  forms  of  citizen  participation in  budget  decision-making,  extending  the  principles  of  PB  up  to  the  intermunicipal  cooperation, increasing the independence of municipalities in implementing PB projects, and strengthening the role of the federal center in promoting and coordinating this mechanism in the regions.

The article deals with the problems of state policy implementation in the field of development of domestic passenger air traffic—pilots’ labor migration in Russian airlines. From the theoretical perspective, the research is based on papers about labor migration of skilled workers and, in addition, is expanded by industry publications on the selection and change of the employer company by flight crew members. Aviation regulators are faced with  a  serious  problem—the  need  to  fit  new  models  of  operating  activities  of  airlines  into  the  priorities  and measures of state policy in the field of aviation activities. The empirical part of the research is a case using a set of quantitative and qualitative data: the results of a pilots’ survey in the largest Russian airline Aeroflot, materials of interviews with industry experts, state statistics and the industry regulator of the Federal Air Transport Agency. According to the results of assessing intentions to change the company, high wages at a new workplace is the main motivating factor of international migration for Russian pilots. In addition, the need for career growth encourages pilots to change jobs, but rather at home than abroad. An inverse U-shaped dependence was revealed between the propensity for labor migration and the age of the pilot. The presented work makes up for the lack of research in the field of peculiarities of the functioning of companies in the important infrastructure industry of passenger air transport. The article contributes to the research of the aviation industry in terms of conditions of sustainable development, as well as to the analysis of factors of labor migration among representatives of professions with narrow qualifications. The conclusions obtained in the study can be used to create comprehensive state policy measures to retain qualified personnel in Russian airlines.

In this paper, the authors propose their estimates of the factors of economic growth in the late USSR, accounting for heterogeneity of its territories. Utilizing panel data for the republics of the former USSR, the authors test the models of endogenous growth expressed by a modified production function with fixed effects. As independent variables the authors select stocks of physical and human capital at their replacement cost; proxy indicators of institutional and technological change; and R&D expenditures as a source of endogenous “Romerian” growth. The institutional quality is proxied by murder rate, an indicator of the most accurately registered type of violent criminal offense, as well as by “white- vs blue-collar wage differential” in industry, an indicator of trade-offs in the policies for production incentives and income distribution. The technological level of the economy is proxied by infant mortality. The authors model and estimate production functions based on both levels of the series and their rates of change. Statistically significant fixed effects are found, which indicate the existence of interrelationships in economic development of the former USSR republics as regions of the unified system. The authors reveal mixed evidence of Soviet economy transition to an endogenous growth model based on R&D and technological progress, which remained undeveloped. They document the increase of investments in intellectual capital in R&D and human capital formation in education. The hypothesis of the significant contribution to the slowdown of economic growth in the USSR on the part of deterioration of the institutional environment receives only partial support. The hypothesis of importance of technological level stagnation has received more support. In theoretical discourse of development economics, the authors discuss issues of human capital accumulation and investments in R&D for an economy at the middle stage of industrial development.

The article examines attempts to use computers for improving the quality of state economic plan­ning in the USSR in the 1960s–1970s. The initial design of the computer network was subjected to repeated adjustments until it began to be implemented as the Automated System of Planned Calcu­lations of the State Planning Committee of the USSR. The whole process can be divided into stages, which differ both in the nature of the work and in the nature of the prevailing rhetoric about the place of computers in economic management. Based on archival documents, I identify limitations that the developers of the automated system had to consider: the weakness of the hardware and software base, the distrust of the “old” planners, problems of algorithmizing the process of national planning, and the need to enter into political alliances with various ministries and departments. However, with all the forced adjustments to the project, the target image of the future system remained unchanged: a unified and nationwide one, covering all economic ministries and departments. It is concluded that the prevailing point of view on the causes of computerization problems needs to be corrected: the slippage was caused not by the Soviet bureaucracy’s opposition to the very idea of computerization of planning, but by technical and organizational problems that had clearly emerged by the end of the 1960s—in particular, the desire of participants to interpret the idea in the most favorable light for themselves and lead the process of its implementation. The main obstacle to the computerization of public administration, therefore, was the lack of command in the command economy of the USSR.