Sustainable social and economic processes of the recent decades are characterized by the emergence of new phenomenon known as precarity and its new accompanying class known as the precariat. The precariat as a social class or social community is primarily associated with a factor of instability and insecurity of workers with flexible employment. This paper studies the precarity on the labor market for the socially-oriented professions in the three Russian metropolitan areas: Moscow, Kazan, and Rostov-on-Don. The paper searches for the causes of precarity of socially-oriented professions based upon the analysis of economic processes in the public sector, and of the reformers' rhetoric and its reflection in the discourses of the main actors about the goals and direction of the reforms. Sociallyoriented professions are associated with the creation of benefits, which are very little associated with markets and in most cases belong to public or mixed goods. Our findings suggest that the reforms of Russian education and healthcare spheres are accompanied by large-scale institutional changes which resulted in bureaucratization, orientation toward achieving performance indicators not related to professional values, stagnation of incomes, inequality between regions, and instability of professional trajectories. We conclude that reducing the prestige of socially-oriented professions, the material well-being, along with instability, become the main factors of precarity.

The implementation of neoliberal reforms in higher education coincides with the radical institutional changes in the transition from a planned to a market economy. The modernization of higher education is also connected with the concept of the “entrepreneurial” university that represents a third-generation university with an emphasis on optimization and marketing. However, economic policy aimed at reforming and developing the public sector is based on the import of institutions related to the production of public and mixed goods. In this paper, we show that neoliberal reforms threaten the welfare state in transition economies such as the Russian Federation. In addition to marketing, monetization, and commercialization, all areas of the public sector underwent an optimization policy, which primarily implied a relative reduction in the cost of producing public goods. The rhetoric of the marketing of education represents the modern state’s masked refusal to fulfill a part of its social obligations. Moreover, we argue that market channels intended for financing education are highly dependent on the income level of the population, the availability of institutions and the infrastructure for raising funds, and, most importantly, the development of the educational services market. Within this context, another significant factor is represented by the positive externalities from the prevalence and quality of education. Thence, our results show that insufficient private demand for education, including higher education, can negatively affect the prospects for the country’s socio-economic development in the medium and long run.

In the context of globalized markets and localized R&D structures, tertiary (also called higher or university) education becomes one of the main factors facilitating economic performance. In the face of globalization and digitalization, substantial institutional changes, reforms and merges of universities represent a challenge for the higher education in the 21st century. These changes go hand in hand with economic development and global economic growth as far as higher education significantly impacts economic performance of regions and countries. European Union (EU) also faces these challenges and therefore has to promote higher education policies and invest into tertiary education in order to increase the level of human capital of its citizens with the purpose of achieving competitiveness on the global markets and higher economic growth. Our paper focuses on the reforms in higher education that are currently taking place worldwide and employ best practices occurring in universities throughout the world. In particular, we show that higher education has a positive impact on the economic performance as well as on the individual social and economic performance. We employ an empirical model that demonstrates the tertiary

Abstract. Reforming higher education and science in the world is associated with the widespread introduction of the indicators aimed at promoting their sustainability, productivity, and efficiency. The introduction of new educational technologies and the development of networks in education allow us to speak about the effect of increasing returns and mostly positive feedback. The instability inherent in such processes is an important factor for institutional change. Higher education and the professions associated with it, become large-scaled, which determines the use of indicators in the management plan. Exogenously introduced target indicators of development negatively affect the existing academic freedom and values, as well as hinder their reproduction. This paper attempts to understand the limitations of quantitative indicators and their impact on the adaptive strategies of the actors achieving them. We think that it is necessary to pay more attention to the problems of academic culture and values as important factors in both economic and social performance. It should be considered that education as a specific type of activity and institution is associated with the production of public goods and trust, and performs an important social function. We scrutinize the system of higher education through the prism of applying development target indicators as a tool of public policy. Our results seem to justify the importance of integrating institutions, values and self-governance mechanisms that promote long-term sustainable development.

Nowadays, the most typical reforms in higher education are conducted through the reorganization of universities either in the form of a merger, acquisition, or new status attainment. As a result, universities which educate local leaders for their respective national economies and have a profound impact on the regional economic development, as well as the composition of the labor market and intellectual potential, often encounter negative economic outcomes. The reforms that are imposed by the policymakers “from above” often hamper the development of universities and prevent them from fulfilling their roles described above. The process of reforming higher education in Russia is in many ways similar to the changes in the higher education systems of other European countries, in particular in post-Communist transition economies. Firstly, this process went through the integration into the global market of educational services. Secondly, it proceeded with the rethinking of the role of the university as a self-sustainable business organization. Thirdly, it was concluded by an increase in the demand and accessibility of education using the advancements offered by the digital technologies. Our paper argues that focused and well-balanced economic institutional design might be required for the sustainable development of reorganized leading universities. The project perspective implies that it is necessary to develop an institutional design in relation to what the organization seeks to achieve (either as its regulator or reformer) and how it intends to achieve these goals. In connection with the foregoing, we propose the following principles of designing effective institutions for the sustainable development of reorganized universities: (i) preservation of education as a “mixed” good (i.e., one that has the features of both public and private goods); (ii) transparency of decision making; (iii) complementarity of institutional change; and last but not least (iv) reduction in transaction costs.

Education and science play an increasingly significant role in the development of modern society as well as the economy. The number of years people spend on education has been steadily increasing over the past century, and this phenomenon has become truly global. Thence, one would probably agree that education strengthens its importance in social and economic life, and its development becomes an important indicator of the economic well-being and sustainable development of any given country. Our paper scrutinizes the indicators of development and trust in eduction and science using a case study from Russian Federation, a country where education has a very important, yet a dubious and debatable significance. In Russian society, a paradoxical situation has developed in many ways with attitudes in society towards the state of the education system, which is reflected in the gap in the desire to give their children (or grandchildren for that matter) the highest level of education coupled with a very low rate of assessment of this very education. We measure and apply the indicators of growth of science and education based on the the level of trust which is taken as a proxy of the quality of social capital. We show that a high level of trust characterizes social capital, which contributes to the establishment of depersonalized (impersonal) social ties, both outside and inside organizations. On the other hand, the low level of trust causes a dysfunction of management and complicates the formation of social ties and is characterized by the dominance of institutions that limit the possibilities of social and professional mobility. Our results and outcomes can be useful for constructing economic and social measures for supporting the growth of science and education as well as for finding the most effective pathways for achieving the sustainable development of this field which leads to the increase in the economic competitiveness of a country.

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In the modern conditions of the post-COVID world, the transformation of the world economy in the framework of the transition to the post-industrial paradigm, and the economy of “knowledge”, the national innovation system (NIS) plays a leading role in the formation of competitive sectors of any given country. Within this setting, the performance of the Russian innovation system significantly lags behind other countries and calls for modernisation based on the modern regulatory tools, policies, and world’s leading trends. The direct import of institutions of foreign innovation systems demonstrates its limited effectiveness due to the incompleteness of institutions and mechanisms for regulating the institutional environment of the Russian economy. One of the generally recognised, leading, and the most “universal” instruments for implementing innovation policy by government institutions is the public procurement of innovation. The analysis of international experience shows that the implementation of the innovation policy via innovative public procurement has a highly heterogeneous landscape even in such a “cohesive” jurisdiction as those represented by the European Union (EU) as far as different types of policy dominate in different countries of the world. There is no clear trend towards the only one mainstream regulatory approach. In this context, the Russian experience demonstrates de facto the absence of any centralised, transparent, and effective policy expressed in such pseudo-innovative procurement as refuelling cartridges or car repairs. This paper identifies the existing institutional failures of the Russian NIS on the example of the regulation of innovative domestic procurement. It proposes ways to modernise the current policy based on the institutional and narrative approaches in order to foster its leading position in the international competition. This article shows the gaps in the literature in institutional governance of innovations and innovation procurement in Russia and points at directions for future research based on narrative economics. Outlining the present knowledge as a foundation for future research in institutional governance of innovations, this article holds implications for both academics and practitioners in the field of the innovation policies and public procurement.