This article considered the Bank of Russia results within the target mandates for 2022. The risks of the policy of fiscal dominance, financial instability and price volatility are analised. It is substantiated that these risks hinder the transition of the Russian economy and its financial sector to new forms of business organization in the country. In conclusion, a package of anti-crisis measures to increase the independence of the monetary policy of the Bank of Russia is proposed.

Federal relations represent one of the key features of the institutional structure of the state in modern Russia, the most significant "frame" of its economic space and the basis for the hierarchy of public power in the country. It is no coincidence that all transformations in the sphere of federal relations directly affect all aspects of economic, social and other processes in the country. At the same time, as the experience of recent decades shows, this impact can be both positive and negative. Here everything depends on the "quality" of the reforms, namely on their socio-political and economic validity, clear goal-setting, objective monitoring and evaluation of the final results. Unfortunately, in many respects Russian institutional reforms lack these qualitative attributes. Most often, these reforms appear insufficiently motivated, devoid of clear goal-setting and a detailed assessment of the results actually achieved; they fail to get completed as their goals are attained, and simply come to nothing in the end. This suggests that we should not only reevaluate what has already been done to reform federative relations but also consider possible further steps in this direction, including necessary and possible changes and their potential impact on the spatial structure of Russia and its economy.

In this paper, the authors continue their research of the scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation's regions. The relevance of this issue in the context of technological sanctions pressure blocking the country’s access to foreign technologies and investment resources is increasing. Given the federal nature of the state, its subjects’ different levels of development in all spheres, including science and technology, and the shortage of resources, it seems appropriate to identify local scientific and technological growth points.

The authors provide a comparative analysis of various methods for rating scientific and technological development, including the governmental one. In addition, they propose their own methodology based on existing statistical data, and rate Russian regions taking into account different aspects of scientific and technological development. The authors have come to a conclusion about the uneven scientific and technological development of the subjects of the Russian Federation, which is caused by the existing spatial distribution of scientific and technological infrastructure. They have identified a small group of regions determining the index for Russia as a whole. These regions are the country’s centers of innovative development where the necessary scientific and technological infrastructure was created, hosting leading research institutes and higher educational institutions with the high R&D potential.

The article presents a brief summary of the development of political economy. The fundamental differences between the methodology of political economy and the methodology of economics are briefly described. It is shown that modern political economy is not reduced to either Marxism or the "new political economy" of J. Buchanan. The relevance of research within the framework of institutional political economy, which is capable of developing the achievements of classical political economy, traditional institutionalism and institutional evolutionary theory, is substantiated. It is proposed to develop constitutional political economy within the framework of this particular area of political and economic research.

The author analyzes the concept of access to foreign markets and theoretical approaches to study this category. He differentiates the concepts of market access and one of export support, presents a system of factors determining access to foreign markets, and singles out general factors, as well as factors of the I and II order conditioned by the general economic and market situation. Factors of the first order are directly related to foreign trade policy, factors of the second order correspond to other types of economic policy. The author identifies current trends in the above groups of factors and their significance for Russia. He analyzes the influence of economic integration on the formation of market access conditions by examining the degree of integration of groups of market access factors, as well as the level of their predominant formation (national or supranational) depending on the stage of economic integration.

The study of the dynamics of interstate interactions during globalization and regionalization of the world economy enabled to accumulate a significant amount of theoretical and empirical results, which can be used to assess the impact of cross-border trade cooperation on regional economic development. A particular interest is using different approaches and methods for the analysis of the development of border regions in the context of integration. The author compares the dynamics of some border regions of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the EU and a number of other states involved in the integration processes. He attempts to summarize the most significant conclusions of Russian and foreign scholars studying the impact of interstate integration on the socio-economic situation of border regions. He notes that certain opportunities for assessing the impact of a region’s border position on its development are provided by the new theory of trade and new economic geography. The study has shown that the impact of integration on the development of border regions differs a lot. It depends on various goals and motives behind the convergence of independent states, as well as on unique institutional factors of border areas.

The purpose of this study is to assess the development of Russia's foreign trade after the sanctions imposed. It has been found that the results of foreign economic activity in 2022 was an unprecedentedly high current account value of the balance of payments. Such aggregates as exports, imports, balance of goods and services had a key impact on this. It is revealed that the importance of the EU trade partnership for Russia has decreased, while the value of goods supplied to the EU has increased. The analysis reveals that the increase in the value of exports was influenced by two factors: a decline in the volume of shipments and an increase in the prices of major imported commodity groups. As trade relations with the EU countries are rapidly losing their importance for Russia, it started developing alternative ways of exchanging goods with other countries of the world.

The article is devoted to the statistical analysis of the current state of trade cooperation between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia over the past 15 years. The authors provide comparative characteristics of the results of mutual trade over the past 15 years with regard to dynamics of trade turnover, exports, imports and commodity composition of trade (on a county-by-country and period-by-period basis). The long-term trend of reducing the volume of trade turnover and Russian exports with a simultaneous increase in the CEE countries’ exports to Russia was revealed, the structure of commodity supplies was analised. It was demonstrated that the primarily raw material Russian export is unpromising in the context of the unfolding "green energy transition" in the European Union. It also pointed out a trend of curtailing mutual trade relations, which began in 2022 due to the sharp escalation of the conflict between Russia and the collective West.

Cross-border e-commerce is an important channel for trade cooperation in the SCO region, and is of great importance for trade development and facilitation within the SCO. Currently a unified regional cross-border e-commerce platform has not yet been formed in the SCO region. There are certain logistical and transport shortcomings in the region, the level of industrial parks needs to be improved, the mechanism of customs supervision is still imperfect, and the lack of market regulation limits cross-border trade. Facilitation development factors impede the further development of cross-border e-commerce within the SCO. This article considers the development of cross-border e-commerce in the SCO Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Zone as a starting point, study the development of cross-border e-commerce in the SCO region, analyze the problems that exist in this sphere, and finally relevant proposals to the SCO management to facilitate the regional cross-border e-commerce platform were developed.

Increasing sanctions pressure on Russia and the need to implement the Presidential Decree оn the National Development Goals of the Russian Federation through 2030 (July 21, 2020, No 474) determines the urgency of the search for effective tools encouraging real growth of fixed investment up to at least 25% GDP. One such instrument could be the Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement (IPPA) allowing private business to stabilize the business environment, which is especially important under conditions of growing uncertainty, when predictability becomes the rarest and most demanded resource. The purpose of the study is to analyze a tool designed to stimulate the implementation of investment projects on the territory of Russia – IPPA. The methodology of the study includes comparative, systematic and informative analysis. The main finding is that, despite some limitations, IPPA is a potentially effective tool to support the implementation of private investment projects under conditions of import substitution, helping to restart the investment cycle and attract «long-term» money to the real sector of the national economy.