Abstract:
Economic research in space largely concentrates on the applied aspects of the functioning and development of systems of different ranks, the interaction of these systems, the functional and structural elements of localized economic systems at the national level. In this direction, a large body of results has been accumulated concerning individual regions (mainly administrative ones), as well as measurements of the characteristics of the distribution of macroeconomic and social indicators in the national space. The theoretical achievements of domestic spatial economics are much more modest, which is an unfortunate dissonance with the rich history of achievements in the theory of spatial development, which is represented by several national schools, including the Soviet, and was even awarded a Nobel Prize. The constantly increasing emphasis on regional economic policy in recent years, which is typical for all national and international studies, but is especially noticeable against the backdrop of the relatively recent nihilism of political and expert circles in Russia in relation to the regional aspects of economic policy, requires, if not the construction of a canonical theoretical platform spatial research, then, in any case, achieving consensus on the main theoretical problems of analysis and forecasting of social, including economic, spatial development. Therefore, the “regional” issue of a journal devoted to issues of economic theory is an important complement to the efforts undertaken in this direction by specialized scientific journals published in Russia, which include such as “Region: Economics and Sociology”, “Spatial Economics”, “Regional Economics” «, «Russian Regional Studies», «Regionalistics», etc. This issue of the journal presents a thematic selection of scientific articles specifically on the theory of economics of regional systems. The articles in the issue do not pretend to present a holistic picture of the theoretical analysis of problems of spatial development, reflecting the author’s preferences both in the field of structuring the subject and the theoretical depth of analysis and completeness of the synthesis.
