The investment activity pause in Russia’s economy makes critical the question of potential, directions and possible efficiency of the activation of investment process. The article presents the analysis of structural shifts, tendencies and sources of investments into fixed capital. In addition, the authors focus on the problem of efficiency of investments expansion into various sectors of the Russian economy. The article provides the analysis of investment activity targets in the domestic economy.

The case of the Russian textile and apparel industry is investigated on the basis of statistical data and data collected from the surveys of enterprise managers. It is shown how lock in the local markets has led to a gradual deterioration of the observed industry. Influential studies of economists and sociologists are used to describe emergence and transformation of the global value chains in textile and apparel industry with a specific reference to the experience of China. Policy changes regarding raw materials and local production systems are suggested to encourage integration of this industry into the global economy.

The author presents estimations of economic distortions in the Russian housing sector, which have become the result of the housing policy of the last 70 years. Such distortions are explained by the deficiency of investment required for supporting existing housing assets. The author suggests mechanisms for eliminating the gap between investment required and actual one. The study results allow justify the goal of the state housing policy in Russia and determine the optimal strategy for achieving this goal using available resources.

The situation in old industrial cities all over the world is very different. Nevertheless, each city goes through a crisis. The article deals with the strategies of the cities that weathered the most severe crisis. Casestudy approach helps to analyze both the principles of successes strategies and the reasons of failure. The author makes a conclusion that the main factor of successful development of Russian old industrial cities is the recognition of crisis tendencies and the need to change approaches of strategic decision making at an early stage.

There is a popular view in Russian studies arguing that underdevelopment of Russian civil society is partly responsible for the failure of liberal idea in Russia. Fragmented society sees no alternative to massive government regulation, that is why support of strong state is so high. If this logic is true, the differences in civicness across urban societies should show up in liberal parties support. This paper estimates this effect using social capital framework and drawing upon the data from Russian regions.

The paper considers monitoring of environmental change as the central element of environmental regulation. Monitoring, as each kind of principalagent relations, easily gives rise to corruptive behavior. In the paper we analyze economic models of environmental monitoring with high costs, incomplete information and corruption. These models should be the elements of environmental economics and are needed to create an effective system of nature protection measures.

The article analyzes the results of the jubilee X International Symposium on Evolutionary Economics “The Evolution of Economic Theory: Reproduction, Technology, Institutions”. The main scientific and organizational challenges in the field of evolutionary economics are discussed, promising areas of development of the evolutionary paradigm and related institutional and system paradigms are determined.

Prospects for the development of an alternative macroeconomic theory are associated with the provisions that the dynamics of the economy is determined by the change of generations of capital and that there is a problem of coordination between different generations of capital. The circulation and reproduction of capital are analyzed. We consider the socalled shifting mode of reproduction. The mathematic model has shown that coordinated growth is possible if social and economic interests between capital and labor are agreed, and monetary policy stimulates this growth.