The role of institutional sectors of regional economy in human capital formation in European Russia (late 19th – early 20th centuries)

Abstract

The issue of national and historical features of human capital was broadly discussed by public thought and academic discourse. It is vitally important in the sense to be the key to perceiving perspectives of the development of Russia’s economic and social institutions. Moreover, high degree of spatial differentiation is a persistent characteristic of both the Russian Empire, and the USSR, and the modern Russian Federation, primarily as a result from multinational and multicultural composition of the population of their territories. The article presents our preliminary results of the project for reconstruction of macroeconomic dynamics in selected regions of the late Russian Empire, as regards their human capital accumulation. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the cases of selected regions of European Russia as regards the role which various institutional sectors of their economies played in financing of education and health care as basic branches of human capital formation. To implement this purpose annual governors’ reports are introduced to the literature as the main source for the reconstruction of long series of the indicators of human capital industries, the reliability of which is discussed in the article. The author used cross-check of the sources quantitative evidence, employed methods of long series reconstruction of the indicators in question (inter-, retro-, and extrapolation) and their statistical analysis (descriptive, comparative). When offering his own explanation of the evidence the author applied to categories and concepts of institutional economic history in the context of modernization paradigm. The first results demonstrate which institutional sectors to what extent were the sources and the recipients of financial resources for human capital formation, and how institutional differences between the provinces could affect the accumulation rate of this factor of production. In particular, it is documented that local self-governments retained their leading role in healthcare financing while the share of the central government was increasing gradually to become the major source of education financing. These results are important in the context of addressing the inquiries of the period’s place in the long run processes of capital accumulation (both physical and human); of their role in Russia’s economic development; as well as of persistence of specific regional characteristics over time, that determined the existence of various institutional paths within the country-wide processes of modernization and formation of the common economic space.

Keywords

socio-economic development, regional economy, industrialization, institutions, annual governors’ reports, long time series, human capital, education, healthcare

For citation

Didenko D.V. The role of institutional sectors of regional economy in human capital formation in European Russia (late 19th – early 20th centuries). Perm University Herald. Economy, 2019, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 518–536. DOI 10.17072/1994-9960-2019-4-518-536

Acknowledgements

The research was carried out under the Russian government assignment of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public administration “Regional models of socioeconomic development in European Russia in the 19th – early 20th centuries” (2018) and “Living standards and socioeconomic development of the regions of European Russia in the mid-18th – early 20th centuries” (2019).
The author thanks his colleagues who took part in useful discussions of preliminary drafts for the paper while assuming his full responsibility for any possible shortcomings of the article.

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