This article presents a discussion on the positive aspects and problems of the transition of many Russian higher education institutions from the traditional management structure: faculties- departments to a new level – the consolidation of the departments, as scientific and educational management units of the university into departments in areas (for example, management, economics, etc.). The authors present their vision of the positive development of the university as its progressive movement, as well as maintenance and improvement of its competitive position without moving to a new model of departmentation, which, in the opinion of the authors, makes it possible to strengthen the directions of educational and scientific research activity without painfully breaking the habitual way of governing the university. Certain critical judgement of the authors pursues the objectives of search, discussion and launch of the internal mechanisms of strengthening of competitiveness of the University.

The article by analyzing the present day condition of the national system of food provision shows certain specific features of the current stage of its development, identifies the key problems of the food sector of consumer market in the country and systematizes causes of their arising. While choosing the economic strategy of developing the national system of food provision the authors propose to assume priority of its sustainable functioning as an object of state administration and regulation with due regard to zone (nature and climate) differentiation of Russian Federation entities; to optimize steps of organizational and managerial impact on conditions of the development and sustainable functioning of food structures on federal and regional levels; to carry out the territorial and food approach in development administration and regulation of business entities’ functioning in regional systems of food provision.

The article deals with the issue of economy state regulation in conditions of dynamic development, it investigates its current situation and discusses objectives of introducing new approaches, tools and mechanisms. The topic is researched through identifying 12 important postulates, within the frames of which one direction of  the state activity is being formulated. The author shows the reasons and factors influencing each direction of state regulation and the system in general, which causes the need to develop it in the global system of economic relations. The steps aimed at implementing state programs, promising plans in the field of attaining sustainable growth of economy are described. Adequate arguments, statistics, author’s opinion dealing with mechanism of their realization and possible effect are provided. The author compares different tools which could support measures of state regulation of economy on the background of internal contradictions, global trends of development and their impact on social and economic and finance policy. The article considers acute issues of the current and strategic nature and substantiates the need to improve the quality of strategic decisions and their compliance with unique targets of society development.

The lake Baikal, as an object of the global nature heritage is facing an ecological disaster of the national scale. This is one of the most important conclusions drawn by the Baikal International Ecological Water Forum while discussing problems of preserving the ecosystem of the lake Baikal and rational use of its resources. In spite of serious attention on the part of federal and regional authorities to this problem, first of all by preparing, adopting and implementing the Water Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period up to 2020, the Principles of Ecological Policy of the Russian Federation and by efforts aimed at practical realization of important programs, such as the Federal program ‘Protection of the Lake Baikal and Social and Economic Development of the Baikal Natural Territory for 2012–2020’, the Federal program ‘The Development of the Water Industry of the Russian Federation in 2012–2020’ (the program ‘Water in Russia’), the problem of preserving the ecosystem of the lake Baikal is deteriorating and could reach the critical point. On the basis of the new concept of managing national wealth the article describes the Eurasian reserve system, an absolutely new form of financing, which differs from the current form, i.e. state-private partnership. The authors explain the concept and key structural elements of the new investment mechanism of financing socially important ecological projects and programs functioning on the basis of the reserve system and its essential component – regional mortgage funds of development. They assume that proposed investment mechanisms of financing infrastructural ecological projects and programs of developing water industry in Russia could decline considerably global resource risks and would ensure effective realization of the program ‘Protection of the Lake Baikal and Social and Economic Development of the Baikal Natural Territory for 2012–2020’, the program ‘The Development of the Water Industry of the Russian Federation in 2012–2020’ to reach prosperity of people in Russia and guarantee the development of economy in Russian regions.

The article shows the state approach to managing market profit. Today nobody knows how much enterprises earn from their own activity, from raising labor productivity. It is not clear, which part of profit should be directed to innovation. It is not known, how much profit enterprises get from market situation and which share of market profit is rent. In soviet times profit was considered as social but not economic category. They thought that it belonged not to a certain group of workers but to people in general. It caused the collapse of soviet economy. The author puts forward methodology of identifying elements of market profit and directions of its use in economy.

The article discusses questions concerning formation of human resources potential for development of innovative economy in Russia, the concept of "human resources potential", its structure and composition are revealed, the special role of the national education system and human resources in the process of the country's transition to the innovative development path is emphasized. Based on the system analysis of the problems of ensuring the demand for human resources, the author proposes introduction of regular forecasting of the demand for personnel at the regional level and formation of a targeted request to the education system as a tool to eliminate the discrepancy between the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the human resources potential in the labor market situation.

The article substantiates the approach to the content and methods of estimating the liquidity of finance assets included in the investor’s portfolio (a professional institutional market participant or non- institutional), gives their comparative analysis embracing both the phenomenon of liquidity and methods of its estimation on the basis of market information. It is proposed to consider an approach based on the use of the extended set of liquidity indices, including urgency, depth and flexibility, density and volume of dealings with assets, especially for emerging finance markets. Multidimensional liquidity estimations allow us to get its more accurate values in comparison with one-dimensional. It actualizes the topic of improving the traditional models and designing more original methods of finance asset liquidity estimation, which is used in criteria and restrictions of portfolio investment models.

Ensuring sustainability of the banking system is one of the most important problems of public development. Its decision is necessary both in the period of economic growth and economic depression and rising economic and political risks. The author investigates differences between the terms ‘sustainability’, ‘stability’ and ‘reliability’ in Russian and overseas sources and provides opinions of some authors about these differences. Apart from that he identifies signs of sustainability of the banking system in economy of various countries.

The hypothesis of market efficiency is one of the key ideas of today’s theory of finance. The article analyzes the daily profitability of MICEX index from 2012 to 2017 by testing casual roaming in order to find out whether Russian stock exchange is a weak - efficient form. The empiric testing of the weak form of market efficiency is conducted through the extended Diki – Fuller test. As a result it was found out that Russian stock exchange is not at the level of weak-form efficiency. The author puts forward recommendations aimed at making stock exchange in Russia more efficient.

The article deals with the role and importance of human capital of society in the processes of shaping and development of national economy at the expense of creating its own competitive product with high added value. From theoretical and methodological point of view the component analysis of human capital structure is shown. Methods of its assessment at different levels of business activity are described and key problems of effective use of human capital and building economic processes on this basis are identified. From the practical point of view the author discusses possibilities and the necessity to show processes of using human capital while developing and realizing strategy of long-term social and economic development both at the level of the country and at the level of regions. The author substantiates mechanisms of developing human capital within the frames of the adopted long-term strategy of social and economic development of the Russian Federation.

Today’s agriculture is a complicated biotechnological and social-economic system, which consists of many interconnected elements.  Agricultural production is characterized by high capital-intensity and  power – intensity, as well as by high risk, due to this capital inflow  from other types of economic activity is difficult, while own finance  resources for conducting extended reproduction are not sufficient.  The authors investigate the approach to the developing of agriculture in today’s conditions, which includes elements of new industrialization. The analysis of statistic data of agricultural  producers’ work allows us to say that positive results in the  development of this industry can be reached by increase in investment and continuous state support. The authors study the  activity of small agricultural enterprises and private farms, their  taxation and legislative status. They highlight the issues of using the  selective method for choosing and analyzing statistic data on private farms, provide key formulas for estimating sample data for  the sum total of typical farms, big farms and especially big farms. As an example the authors provide a calculation of key indices of animal produce output in June 2016 in federal districts.

The article shows patterns of the most popular business models, which are used by owners and managers in order to raise the efficiency and increase business value. The author identifies key factors of effective realization of business models and shows models of pricing, e-business and of building effective value creating chains. Building up value for customer allows owners of business to reach their targets. Thus, the use of effective business models could provide an opportunity to build up value and on the other hand – to increase business value. Description of technologies of building effective business models, which is given in the article can form a foundation for designing the work of present day companies.

The article studies motivation principles of the IKEA company, including the importance of work being done, recognition and awarding the results, trust in employees, their unity and consolidation, possibility to study, develop and be promoted and absence of short-term optional programs for executives. Special attention is paid to the most important element of the motivation system, i. e. its sound corporate culture, whose components (encouraging mission statement and corporate values) are as  significant for employees as the system of material incentives.  Research findings allow us to estimate the efficiency of key factors of the company successful development – the motivation system and  corporate culture of the IKEA company and provide an opportunity to use its advanced experience by Russian trade companies.

The article provides the analytical review of the history showing the rise and development of the conceptual model of viable systems. Fundamental works and their authors, research teams and researchers who contributed greatly to substantiation and development of the conceptual model were described. The authors give examples of using the model of viable system in the global and home practice of projecting organizations and managing complicated systems. Projects and events in the field of applied aspects of the model with authors’ participation were depicted. The given material is useful for promising research in the field of further development and introduction of the viable system model of in practice of creating and diagnosing organizational structures.

This paper presents an innovation approach to teaching by step-by-step testing method, which generates the complexity of the task,  depending on the student's level of knowledge. Also we want to generate the assessment of the level of knowledge that is independent of the initial test conditions. The result of this work is the recurrent testing methodology which allows to estimate the student’s level of OC and PC (means the series of coming one after the other tests, each of which takes into account previous results). The results of that part of the work were presented on the international conference "Education, science and economics at universities and schools. Integration to the international educational area" (Goris, Armenia, 2015). An important, or even can be said, the main aspect is to demonstrate that the developed methodology, regardless of the starting point (initial test) rapidly converges to the student's level of knowledge. To prove the fact the corresponding mathematical model of the process (serial testing) was built. Its convergence also was studied. For the practical application of the developed estimation model of OC and the PC the database of tests is forming. We think also about its technical support by developing appropriate software.

The article describes the current condition of agent modeling – a new direction in imitation modeling, which is very important as a tool of  researching complicated heterogeneous decentralized socio-economic  systems. Key spheres of using agent models were identified and researched, examples of models starting from first attempts of  building them to today’s achievements of science both in Russian and  abroad were provided. By analyzing the current condition of agent  modeling the author discusses existing problems and shows further prospects of developing agent modeling.

The intensification of globalization processes and the creation of the international labour market have a considerable influence on the development of national tertiary education systems. The authors of the article have developed a methodology for diagnosing higher education systems at regional level. The following indicative parameters grouped into two blocks are used for such diagnostics: a) conditions of functioning and the state of higher education infrastructure; b) the state of educational and research activities in the higher education system. Based on the obtained results the authors come to a number of conclusions, with the most important implications related to the two trends in the higher education system in Russia: conservatism and development. The Russian higher education system conservatism manifests itself in the research component, academic staff and students’ scientific activity. Regions with strong tertiary research and education institutions are less affected by the state financial policy, therefore, the diagnostics results do not reveal a direct correlation between the level of research funding and the research outcomes. As regards the quantitative indicators of the infrastructure state (the specific quantity of capital assets), in this case we can talk about the development of the higher education system.

The article describes ways of calculating economic efficiency of innovation. It shows parameters characterizing the level of innovation activity development at the present stage. The authors demonstrate creation of the innovation environment as a system of steps aimed at building such economy, which would be based on advanced knowledge. They explain the idea of the system of organizing and governing the innovation environment in the region, discuss its main features which are taken into account for building efficient economy. Principles of shaping the efficient innovation environment are given in detail. The necessity to build the innovation environment regionally is proven, which could create favorable climate from innovation and investment point of view on rather large territory. Integral parts of the innovation environment of the region are illustrated.

The article investigates the system approach to corruption counteracting in customs bodies of the Russian Federation. It discloses the key features of corruption, which in today’s conditions has become a serious problem for the majority of countries, including Russia. The author highlights steps of counteracting corruption in customs bodies, where the first place is taken by preventive measures. The author came to the conclusion that in spite of practical work of customs bodies aimed at corruption counteracting a radical change has not been achieved. Recommendations for enhancing the work of customs bodies against corruption were developed.

The article discusses global economic problems in conditions of finance crisis from the point of view of market economy development. The development of humanity today has mainly the economic component and business processes in conditions of market economy are considered only in view of profit. According to the author it is groundless, as economic processes apart from economic components must bear social and humanitarian function. Only in this situation science starts working for society but not for a small group or several groups , who lobby their own targets and interests. Main problems in the dynamic of global social and economic processes and growth in confrontation of interests of different public groups are identified as the movement of two interconnected powers, i.e. collective labor and private capital, in different directions and their inversely proportional accumulation of capital.

The article analyzes foreign innovation strategies in order to extend and deepen home practice. The comparison of innovation strategies of Great Britain, Germany, the US, and Japan is carried out by a number of criteria: goals and objectives, key area of realization, mechanisms and tools of realization, innovation infrastructure, the role of education in raising innovation activity and the development of the national innovation system. Russia analogues of foreign mechanisms and tools of stimulating innovation activity are shown, elements of innovation infrastructure are described. The authors came to the conclusion about the degree of compliance of approaches used in Russia to overseas practices.

In February 2017 the Russian Plekhanov University of Economics celebrated its 110th anniversary. Establishment of the first Russian economics educational institution has its own history. It is closely connected with the period of complicated social and economic relations in the country and with conditions of the coming political and revolutionary events. From the very beginning not only applied subjects such as economics and product research, accounting, finance were taught but a wide range of theoretical social and humanitarian disciplines. The author analyzes the process of shaping a team of influential and experienced lecturers – professors, experts  in the field of philosophy and at the same time he highlights the work of the Philosophic Club of the Russian Plekhanov University of Economics.