Marina Faminskaya’s research while affiliated with Russian State Social University and other places

Our contribution focuses on the dynamic interaction between human capital accumulation and economic growth. In order to do so, it applies the toolkit of the classic economic theory and scrutinizes the provisions of the human capital formation and other key variables on economic growth. In addition, it evaluates the impact of education and other key variables on the economic growth of countries that have varying human development indicators. In order to adequately examine the impact of human capital accumulation on the GDP per capita increase, the link between the human capital accumulation and income inequality needs to be developed. The theoretical foundation allows us to estimate the effect of human capital accumulation and other variables on per capita GDP growth, drawing on an enhanced version of a neoclassical growth model. Our results call for the enhanced regulation of the human capital that needs to be fostered and supported by the decision-makers such as governmental officials responsible for the labor market policies and regulation of schooling, training as well as education that plays an important role in shaping up high-quality human capital and sustaining its quality and standards for the benefits it can bring for the society and economy.KeywordsHuman capitalEconomic growthEconomic theoryJEL ClassificationJ01J24O38

Our paper focuses on factors that help to successfully and efficiently manage urban infrastructure in large cities and centres using Big Data solutions. We explain the key points about urban Big Data approaches, including infrastructure that supports urban governance, public services and economic and industrial development, taking into account and supporting the central role of urban Big Data in urban intelligence with particular emphasis on the smart cities. Moreover, we want to add a third dimension to social urban data analysis by assessing the use of social, spatial, and temporal data for key issues to understand how it can influence human behaviour across time and space. Our results might have important implications for urban planners and policy-makers and contribute to the mitigating the regional inequalities as well as to improving urban infrastructure and making the cities of the future happier and healthier places for all their citizens.

Emerging markets are rapidly developing and outperforming developed markets in terms of onshore wind and solar power. Moreover, emerging markets are now getting drivers for the enhancement of global renewable energy as they are seen as territories with the greatest potential for expansion of wind and solar capacities. This study aims to investigate the casual links between financial investments by gas and oil giants and long-term vision around clean energy. We analysed various reports on procurement tools used by corporations, purchasing renewable energy. This gave us an idea about the availability and frequent usage of different instruments employed around world. The empirical results show that state support and policy development both have positive impact on state and private investments in the long run. The influence of energy development is more evident in emerging clean energy markets. The findings of the this study suggest that as renewable energy targets price and performance parity with traditional sources around the world, and is getting able to improve grid efficiency thus strengthening its competitive edge with new technologies, the hurdles to its adoption are disappearing.

This paper tackles the economic impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on the labor markets and human capital. Specifically, it looks into the issues the pandemic brought upon the human resources and personnel during coronavirus lockdowns. Our results identify that in spite of all the adverse effects of the pandemic such as the excessive burden on the healthcare system, great economic losses and disruptions on the labor market (such as the loss of human capital and widening gaps in gender inequality) due to the lockdowns in many countries intended to slow down the spread of the infection with the purpose of flattening the curve representing the numbers of the COVID-19 patients, the current situation had many positive economic effects. For instance, we find that the recent pandemic helped to increase the financial inclusion and enabled broader access to financial system. In addition, during the past few months, digitalization and the use of information technology deepened and progressed in both large and small enterprises as well as in the higher education institutions. Moreover, COVID-19 pandemic helped to develop the awareness about the climate change among many people by demonstrating how the decrease in economic activity can have a profound effect on cutting CO2 emissions. Furthermore, we find that COVID-19 pandemic contributed to optimizing work load and cutting unnecessary work in many large and small business companies and public institutions. It is likely that most of them will continue with this optimization and digitalization of work after the pandemic is over. Last but not least, we note the enhanced family life and interpersonal relations that would without any doubt contribute to the quality of human capital and the level of happiness. Our results might be useful for public officials and labor market specialists who would want to grasp the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and to find ways how to smoothen its impacts.

Conceptual system developed in optimal control theory for technical purposes is used as a philosophical instrument applied to cyclic information processes, which are expected to be the basis of noosphere. Noosphere was perceived by the founding fathers of this concept, Vernadsky, Teilhard de Chardin, e.a. as an outgrowth of the evolutionary process, which begins with cosmogenesis and proceeds through geosphere and biosphere. We attempt to apply the optimal control concepts to all three levels – geospheric, biospheric, and noospheric – due to their having a common structure of information processes (or entropic processes considered as proto-information). These processes include homeostasis, accumulation and expenditure of information, formation of hierarchical information structures, evolution involving the breaks of homeostasis etc. In noosphere, controlled system may have the same informational capabilities as controlling system, so that the term “dialog” is more adequate; in this case, we extend optimal control description to game theory. The cyclic, feedback logic of optimal control seems better adapted to noospheric processes than usual causeeffect logic. This second part of the paper proceeds from the geo- and biospheric levels discussed in the first part to the noospheric level. The basic structure at this level is the fusion of natural matter/energy cycles characteristic for geosphere with anthropogenic information cycles, which extend information accumulation and adaptation inherited from biospheric level into reflective realm. The basic type of informational interaction between these structures is construed in perspective of game theory between reflective players. Its essential feature is the interaction between reflective images that each player forms of other players and of oneself. We describe the nontrivial information flows that can arise in a distributed global system of such structures, including complex interactions between collective and individual levels and paradoxes. We analyze the role of science as the carrier of the “rational model”, on which this entire system is based, and the impact on this model of the sociobiological background of science inherited from the biospheric level. We also discuss the role of natural language as an alternative noospheric structure capable of supporting the irrational components of the noosphere. City is discussed as an example of an emerging structure integrating the basic noospheric components, albeit in an inchoate form. Finally, we consider the reflective identities (“I”), which may emerge in noosphere, and the relevant ethical issues.