Perspective Economic Specializations For The Russian Regions In The Strategy Of Spatial Development: Convergence Clubs

The “Spatial Development Strategy of the Russian Federation for the Period until 2025” contains promising economic specializations for each region and formulates a goal in the form of reducing inter-regional differences. The article analyzes the correspondence between the declared goal and the distribution of economic specializations in the Russian regions. The methodological basis of the study was the concept of economic convergence, according to which the development paths of many regions converge to one (absolute convergence) or several (relative convergence) levels. A measure of regional similarity in the combination of promising economic specializations is proposed. Calculations showed that the hypothesis of absolute convergence of the Russian regions for promising specializations was not confirmed. It is concluded that there is no correspondence between the distribution of specializations by regions and the goal of spatial development. To test the hypothesis of relative (club) convergence, cluster analysis was used. By the similarity of specializations, the Russian regions are combined into six convergence clubs. The first club can be considered economically sustainable in many specialties. The remaining five clubs have few specializations and may be unstable in the context of the economic crisis. According to the strategy of spatial development in Russia, a certain center will be formed from the regions of the first club and the periphery from the regions of other clubs. This will result in a specific territorial structure in which peripheral highly specialized regions will be located (except for one region) along the state border of the Russian Federation. The strategy identified a number of conceptual and empirical errors. To detect and correct other errors, it was proposed to conduct an independent examination of the strategy.