The paper highlights the theory of cultural evolution by F. A. Hayek, which in retrospect appears as a complex and deep system, in many respects anticipating the ideas of modern evolutionary psychology. The first part provides a general description of the Hayekian approach, examines its theoretical foundation, and discusses the main stages of cultural evolution. Hayek was far from considering cultural evolution to be a copy of biological evolution, emphasizing its nonDarwinian nature. He defined the phenomenon of culture as a set of traditions, norms and rules of conduct lying between the world of natural objects that exist independently of man and the world of artificial objects created by his will and intellect. Hayek considered the central event of cultural evolution to be the transition from small hunter-gatherer groups to modern complex society, which he depicted as “an extended order of human cooperation”.

Currently, the Bank of Russia in its press releases informs the public not only about the decision on the interest rate, but also on the planned trajectory of future interest rates and its own forecasts of the development of the macroeconomic situation. Thus, the Central Bank’s announcement may be unexpected for the public in two senses: a change in the key rate (monetary surprise) and providing new forecast information (informational surprise). The impact of different types of surprises on macroeconomic dynamics may be different, so it is advisable to be able to identify the effect of each of them separately. In this paper, the identification of monetary surprises is proposed, which has advantages over those already presented in the literature. It allows, firstly, to identify yield curve shocks and, secondly, to remove the non-monetary (informational) component from the estimates of monetary surprises. The paper reveals the need to identify information shocks using intraday data and the advantages of using minute data compared to using data of lower frequency. Based on the proposed high-frequency approach, we assess the role of information shocks and the role of interest rate trajectory signals in formatting Russian inflation expectations.

This study explores the role of business associations in adaptation of Russian companies to international sanctions. To address this query, we have used survey data from leaders of Russian manufacturing companies in 2018 and 2022, which are representative in terms of size and sectors. Membership in a business association has a dual nature: on the one hand, associations can act as a tool for adapting to sanction shocks (direct effect); on the other hand, because of the self-selection effect, they tend to comprise more proactive and resilient companies, which are less fearful of external shocks and, as a result, may be less inclined to take active measures (indirect effect). We distinguish these effects from our analysis by constructing models using a mediator. The findings indicate that in 2018, members of business associations perceived the consequences of sanctions as less severe and were less likely to take any action, possibly because sufficient time had passed for adaptation to them since 2014. Conversely, in 2022, membership in associations did not reduce leaders’ perceptions of the seriousness of sanctions. However, we have found a direct effect of associations, revealing in a quicker response of their members to sanctions, including seeking new suppliers and reducing costs.

The Russian Doctrine of Food Security is built within the framework of the international approach, where food security is understood not only in its specific Russian context but also as economic accessibility for “everyone” to safe and adequate nutrition (interpreted in Russia by rational norms). However, the question of how accessible adequate food is to “everyone” in Russia remains unexplored. This article applies an approach to assessing the economic access of “everyone” to food based on the ratio of food expenditures (at home, out of home, cost of natural inputs) and the cost of a rational food set in households. The calculation takes into account the age and gender composition of households, which leads to the differentiation of a unified rational food set per person in the family, as well as the economy of scale, where families with more members require less expenditure per person to provide adequate nutrition. These calculations allowed for the assessment of the population share with varying levels of food access in Russia and its regions, determining food shortage in households at a spatial level, which is valuable for discussing the organization of food aid in the Russian Federation. This approach has led to a significant reassessment of the situation regarding food security of families across the country and its regions, providing additional arguments in discussing forms of aid for low-income families.

This paper investigates the key features of modern innovative medium-sized cities. The study sample consists of 23 cities with the highest concentration of global high tech corporations, unicorn companies, leading universities, and highly cited researchers among all OECD countries. The distinctive features of cities were identified by comparing the average values of their indicators of well-being, openness to talent, transport accessibility, education coverage, knowledge and technology development, digital infrastructure and ecology with similar indicators of the countries where they are located. It has been revealed that cities with the greatest concentration of science and technology leaders are characterized by a high level of well-being; openness to talent and significant concentration of students, including international ones; preferential location near large agglomerations; developed digital infrastructure providing high Internet speed. This study offers new insight on possible trajectories for further development of Russian science cities and other territories with high scientific and technological potential in the context of foreign experience. Unlike foreign ones, Russian science cities concentrate a small proportion of local and foreign students, and their digital infrastructure is much less developed.

This paper provides a retrospective overview of the debate around the concepts of “affordable housing”, which is the basis for research on the impact of urban zoning and spatial planning on the housing market. The article discusses the main institutional mechanisms of “affordable housing”. It is noted that since housing, being located on land and belonging to land plots, has a number of properties inherent to land as a resource (its quantity is limited and irreproducible, land is non-movable, fixed by location), the free circulation of housing on the market leads to an increase in its exchange value and turns into an investment object. All this leads to a constant rise in prices and a decrease in the affordability of housing, that is, the opposite effect to what the regulator is counting on.

The article presents scenario modeling of the effects of an increase in the minimum wage on the population income and the poverty rate and gap in Russia. The authors use data from the Rosstat Survey of Population Income and Participation in Social Programs and consider three scenarios for increasing the minimum wage ranging from 6.3% (actual increase in 2023) to a radical increase to a value corresponding to 1.5 subsistence levels of a working-age citizen. The estimates accounting for a number of assumptions about the reaction of the labor market show that an increase in the minimum wage in a given range leads to a weak or moderate increase in per capita income, poverty gap, and poverty rate. Even within the radical scenario, the reduction in poverty rate ranges from –16% to –19% of the initial percentage, and the reduction in the total income deficit ranges from –12% to –17%. The main factors limiting the impact of increasing the minimum wage on the monetary poverty rate are related to the structure of Russian households. On the one hand, two thirds of Russian workers with the lowest wages live in households that are not poor by formal criteria. On the other hand, individual earnings above the poverty line may not be sufficient to overcome the poverty of the entire household if it includes minor children.

The results of empirical studies of a number of Russian industries and production complexes, based on the methodology of system-oriented modeling and the concept of mesoeconomic systems, are characterized and evaluated. The analysis of theoretical foundations for regulating mesoeconomic systems proposed in the monograph has been carried out. The economic and sociological methodological interpretations of understanding such systems are compared, and the advantages of the first one are substantiated. The unsolved methodological problems of mesoeconomics are formulated.