The article describes the development of the world oil market, presented by the Russian Energy Agency of the Ministry of Energy of Russia within the framework of working out longterm scenarios for the future of world energy until 2050. The analysis focuses on oil extraction and peak oil consumption in various macroregions. A comparison is made with scenario forecasts of the International Energy Agency, the US Energy Information Administration, OPEC, McKinsey, BloombergNEF and bp Energy Outlook. Recommendations are given for the development of the Russian oil industry within the framework of the Rational Technological Choice scenario.

In this article, an empirical assessment of demographic changes in Russian manufacturing industries has been carried out for the first time. We mainly focus on the analysis of business death and the structural analysis of closed firms. The empirical basis for the study was provided by data from Rosstat and the Central Bank of Russia for 2005—2023, as well as a sample of 262,719 Russian manufacturing enterprises that were liquidated between 2016 and 2022. Methods of fundamental analysis, contextual, and structural approaches were used: the study was conducted at both the macro-level and the industry and individual enterprise levels, considering business birth and death rates, proportions of active and inactive firms, and the structure of closed companies by age, closure type, and degree of activity. The calculation of a modified death rate in industry has been carried out, taking into account the closure of only those enterprises whose death causes real damage to the economy. Its value turned out to be ten times lower than the traditional Rosstat coefficient. This proves that the well-established opinion about negative trends in business demography in Russia cannot be considered objective, as the death rate has been overestimated, and the trend towards its growth in most cases is due to the exclusion of economically inactive firms from USRLE (with zero balance sheets and fly-by-night companies).

The paper analyzes which manufacturing firms in Russia face shortage of skilled workforce more often — effective growing firms or non-competitive enterprises. The regression analysis of the survey data of 1860 Russian manufacturing firms conducted in 2022 showed that growing and effective firms, as well as firms integrated into the global economy, face skilled labour shortage more often. At the same time, firms with higher technological level of production are more effective in solving skilled workforce shortage problems. The shortage of qualified personnel seems to be not a subjective but a real problem of Russian manufacturing firms and an obstacle to the growth and development of competitive enterprises. Additionally, the results are illustrated with materials from 12 expert interviews with enterprise managers. A potential key to addressing the workforce shortage could be an intensive growth model for enterprises based on innovations and a high level of technological organization in production and labour, with the development of production automation that reduces the need for human resources.

We study the institution of pseudo-investment, that is, the placement of money by a layperson under the influence of a media personality who acts as a referral leader actively attracting naïve investors to high-risk yet high return project. We relied on four conceptual frameworks: household financialization as a part of critical macroeconomics; nudging, or pushing consumers to behave in a particular way, treated in our case as a set of unethical tools to pursue narrowly defined self-interest of a referral leader; original institutionalist evolutionary theory to identify behavioral patterns and motives which are targets to involve individuals or their groups in pseudo-investment schemes; reasoned action approach to structure the findings in the context of social psychology. Empirical data comprises the array of text extracted from the introductory video webinars on four investing courses authored by four financial consultants whose activities are featured by the sings of a funnel scam. Discourse analysis implied special attention to manipulative “nudges” financial consultants apply and people’s motives they refer to. Our findings confirm that, attempting to involve individuals into pseudo-investing, referral leaders exploit unproductive patterns related to self-regard proclivity in human nature (greed, self-interest, acquisitiveness, idleness, pecuniary emulation, ostentatious motives in consumption, the desire for undeserved profit, predatory habits, etc.). We also found that productive behavior (such as labor efforts, education activities, and nonspeculative professional engagement) is rendered less important than predatory motives which are hidden behind false care, empathy, and compassion. We claim that the conceptual difference between productive and unproductive behavior patterns, motives and values remains relevant in the contemporary society. Mixed method research and a combination of concepts from various research fields explain why this paper adds to academic literature in behavioral and institutional economics, social psychology, as well as critical macroeconomics research related to financialization and its effects. 

The paper analyses the littleknown essay of one of the classics of economic thought, J. A. Schumpeter (1883—1950), “The sociology of imperialisms,” where he appears not as an economic theorist, but as an economic sociologist. Schumpeter was interested in the problem of imperialism almost throughout his scientific career. His theory was polemically directed against various Marxist interpretations, in which imperialism was viewed as a product of late (“monopolistic”) capitalism and which he subjected to sharp criticism. Schumpeter defined imperialism as objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion, finding examples of it throughout history from Ancient Egypt to the present day. Unlike Marxist authors, he saw capitalism not as a source, but, on thecontrary, as an antipode of imperialism. His key idea was that imperialism was an atavism that is rooted in social structures and psychological attitudes inherited by the modern world from the precapitalist era. According to his forecast, in the course of the further capitalistic development, these relics of the past will be eliminated and imperialism will disappear along with them. Many ideas expressed by Schumpeter in his essay are still of considerable interest. 

The reason for writing this article was the release of the first Russian language textbook on sustainable finance. Its critical analysis, presented in the article, is aimed at creating more comprehensive textbooks on sustainable finance in the future. In addition, in recent years, the author has been actively involved in reviewing university curricula in the field of finance, the results of which can be used to draw an extremely disappointing conclusion about the significant lag in teaching finance in Russia compared to the best world examples. Against the background of the emergence of a new paradigm of finance in connection with the creation and strengthening of the sustainable development model, Russian teachers are guided not just by the old traditional paradigm of finance, but by its version from about 20 years ago. The article contains proposals for the formation of a program of courses on sustainable finance, as well as for taking this concept into account in traditional university courses on finance and individual industry financial disciplines. The author’s view on the selection of literature for courses on sustainable finance is also offered. 

Due to the beginning of an experiment in the area of partnership (Islamic) financing in Russia the relied theme has attracted growing attention in the public domain, including the academia. Unfortunately, insufficiently deep knowledge about the subject may play a trick on some authors. What results are conclusions that are disputable, to say the least. This is the case with the publication in question on the topic of an alleged reform of the regulation of capital adequacy of Islamic banks. Accordingly, there is a need to launch a debate about both the particular arguments and the very problem at the core of the said publication. This paper demonstrates why many premises the coauthors base their reasoning upon are inaccurate, which has led to an erroneous hypothesis, on the one hand, and to the fact that results of econometric exercise could not show a causal relationship between the improved attitude of investors towards Islamic banks, and the “reform” — for the absence of one.