SPATIAL NON-HOMOGENEITY OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IMPACT ON SOCIAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIAN REGIONS

Abstract

T he global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic outlined new challenges for the economic studies aimed to define the factors measuring the difference in the scope of the coronavirus-induced crisis consequences for the national social economic systems. The purpose of this research is to develop the tools to define the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the social economic development of the Russian regions and the resilience of the regional systems to the pandemic in terms of demographic factors. The methodology of the research includes statistical analysis and econometric modeling. The authors defined the economy resilience to the pandemic and developed a resilience index of the regional economy to the COVID-19 pandemic. The resilience index includes groups of homogeneous indicators characterizing the factors of the regional economic growth. Resilience of the regional economy to the COVID-19 pandemic is measured to reveal a negligible positive impact of the population density on the resilience of the RF regions’ economy to the coronavirus-induced crisis. The regions were clustered by the resilience index of their economies to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the leaders-regions, the regions with a moderate level and outsiders-regions were defined. A higher level of the regional economic development is found not to guarantee a more resilient economy to the COVID-19 pandemic. The obtained scientific results could be used to choose customized tools for the recovery of the regional social economic systems with due regard to the area with the worst dynamics of the indicators. Further scientific research is seen to be in analyzing the spatial non-homogeneity during the pandemic compared with pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods, as well as in measuring the detrimental effects of the coronavirus and other external shocks on the RF regions’ economies in the context of demographic factors.