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This paper analyses the modern market for project finance, its sectorial structure and main development trends. This study aims to form a constructive diagnostic toolkit for investment support of infrastructure design in regions, taking into account spatial asymmetry in the context of an integrated management approach.

When analyzing the public–private partnership (PPP) project performance, it is reasonable to distinguish the following two levels of discount rates: state and private. To achieve a high level of development of the general infrastructure of a region, a conceptual approach to the formation of investment support for the development of regional infrastructure has been developed.

The scientific contribution of this study is to improve the approach to modeling investment support for regional infrastructure design in the context of spatial asymmetry. Implementation of infrastructure projects creates prerequisites for sustainable economic growth, improvement in business and investment and social attractiveness of the national economy and its regions.

The practical significance of this study is that its main provisions allow for an effective regional socio-economic policy, based on the systemic development of regional infrastructure and aim at boosting competitiveness.

Recommendations can be used by regional and local authorities to formulate a socio-economic strategy for regional development as well as by representatives of private business who intend to engage in regional PPP projects.

The purpose of this paper is to substantiate the perspectives of using remote education as a means of restoring Russian recessing regions’ economy and develop framework recommendations for this.

The set goal is achieved by finding the dependence of the values of indicators of socio-economic development on the level of development of education in Russian regions. The methods of regression and correlation analysis are used for that.

The findings showed a moderate direct connection between the development of education and socio-economic position of the region if found. Qualitative analysis allowed substantiating large perspectives of using remote education as a means of restoring Russian recessing regions’ economy, which have two manifestations. The first one is related to the increase of accessibility of educational services in Russian regions. Due to this, the potential of development of region’s human potential is better realized. Being one of the key resources in the conditions of knowledge economy, human resources stimulate the activation of entrepreneurial activities, growth of labor efficiency and innovational activity of region’s companies. The second manifestation envisages the formation of entrepreneurship in the sphere of remote education as a growth vector and source of competitive advantages of recessing region’s economy. This opens possibilities for the formation of knowledge economy in region and supporting its high competitiveness. Low capital intensity of entrepreneurship in the sphere of remote education makes it accessible for development even in recessing regions, stimulating the growth of the volume of tax revenues into the regional state budget and formation of its positive balance.

For the practical implementation of the determined large perspectives of using remote education as a means of restoring Russian recessing regions’ economy, authors’ framework recommendations are offered, which are aimed at the improvement of normative and legal conditions for the conduct of entrepreneurial activities in the sphere of remote education, information support for this entrepreneurship and its marketing support and promotion as a basis of region’s economy’s competitiveness.

The purpose of this research is to study what factors influence European citizens in their interaction with government in the EU regions. It analyses the differences across European regions, taking account of each region’s degree of economic development and incorporating different spatially tailored approaches into the analysis.

A logistic regression analysis was used to establish whether the profiles of e-Government users differ according to the development tier they live in and other explanatory variables: socio-demographic, digital skills and type of internet connection.

This research identifies regional inequalities in EU citizens’ digital behaviour with public administration. This statistical study of European regions allows to better apprehend the profile of the EU’s e-citizens and offers conclusions to explain citizens’ behaviour, highlighting the influence of several variables.

Given the lack of pan-European e-government studies at a regional level, this article provides a comparative analysis for the European Union and gives insights into the behaviour of European e-citizens, highlighting the presence of digital inequalities in Europe depending on the region where citizens reside.

What is the effect of an increase of migration inflows on the R&D and innovative performance of developing countries? The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of migration inflows on the R&D and innovation activity (measured as expenditures on R&D and technological innovations) in Russian regions.

To this end, the authors use data on 85 Russian regions for the period 2010-2016 through a multi-region economic geography model. In particular, the authors test the hypothesis about the importance of migration inflows on R&D and technological innovation activity (H1) and the hypothesis about the importance of immigrants’ (incoming migrants) human capital (measured by the education level of incoming migrants) on R&D and innovation activity (H2).

Empirical findings support the evidence in favour of a positive causal link between innovation and migration inflows. Results of our investigation are important because they suggest useful insights for formulating science and innovation policies in Russia, which is a developing country where the recent policies favouring the technological innovation as the transition period have not yet achieved a satisfying outcome.

This paper increases the knowledge in the field with respect to the existing literature, shedding further light on the migration inflows effects, which is a political topic to manage very relevant in all countries.

This paper aims to assess the usage pattern of telecentres, how rural women frame telecentres and barriers that limit use of telecentres. Further, the study examined the effects of demographic characteristics and location on telecentre usage.

The study used a sequential mixed research design in three rural districts surrounding telecentres: Kongwa, Sengerema and Kilosa districts. The study population comprised rural women who were users and non-users of telecentres. The study conducted six focus group discussions (FGDs) with 37 users and six FGDs with 36 non-users in the first phase of the study in 2014; questionnaires were administered to 90 users and 90 non-users in the second phase of the study in 2015.

The primary use of telecentres among users was to access internet (71.4 per cent, n = 60), followed by information and communication technology (ICT) training courses (63.1 per cent, n = 53) and secretarial purposes (63.1 per cent, n = 53). Rural women used internet for educational purposes, followed by news, information on health issues, job opportunities, social and entertainment issues. Rural women currently using internet were more likely to be better educated (ß = 1.926, p = 0.001) and have higher incomes (ß = 5.318, p = 0.021) at both bivariate and multivariate analysis. Users indicated that they faced the following barriers towards using telecentre: short duration of ICT training, frequent power outages, low speed of internet and few computers at the telecentres. Non-users were not using telecentres because of lack of ICT skills and language barriers.

This study provides empirical evidence to telecentres, libraries and other rural ICT initiatives to design rural ICT services that are gender-sensitive and demand-driven.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the kind of evidence and arguments used to support Richard Lynn's increasingly influential doctrine that genetically determined differences in population IQ are the main cause of differences in regional and national levels of socio‐economic development and public health status.

The paper's approach is two‐fold. First, new data on the correlation between regional differences in educational achievement of Italian schoolchildren and regional differences in socio‐economic development are presented in order to test the validity of Lynn's report that there is a progressive North‐to‐South reduction of Italian regional IQ that is highly correlated with a corresponding North‐to‐South reduction in the level of socio‐economic development. Second, a thorough and systematic review of the content of Lynn's article is carried out in order to assess the validity of the data, methods, and arguments normally used to support his socio‐economic doctrine.

Lynn's study uses regional differences in the performance of Italian secondary school children on Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development tests of educational achievement to assess regional IQ differences. However, data on Italian regional differences in educational achievement obtained in a much larger INVALSI study of 2,089,829 Italian schoolchildren provide unequivocal evidence that Lynn's educational achievement measure is not a valid index of IQ differences. More generally, the lengthy literature review in Lynn's article reveals uncritical acceptance of reported correlations between any putative index of IQ and socio‐economic variables. Any measure of cognitive performance that is correlated with IQ is considered a measure of IQ, even if there is only a weak correlation. All correlations between such measures and socio‐economic or public health variables are viewed as evidence of direct causal relationships. In all cases, causality is assumed to be in the direction that supports Lynn's doctrine when it would be equally valid to argue that socio‐economic and public health differences cause differences in the performance of IQ tests. In addition to these fundamental logical and statistical errors the present report records numerous other data processing, methodological, and conceptual errors.

The value of the present article is that it demonstrates the flawed manner in which data are interpreted and analysed in order to support Lynn's thesis. Left unchallenged, this pernicious doctrine would promote a socially damaging conception of critically important socio‐economic and public health issues that would discourage the adoption of national policies designed to increase levels of socio‐economic development and improve public health status.

The study aimed at examining the regional reorganization and its implications on socio-economic development on the people of Oti region, Ghana.

The study utilized both textual data and in-depth interviews in context. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques were used to select 35 participants from the Oti Region.

The study found some critical services, and public goods have been provided and established in Oti Region since its establishment. Furthermore, it was established that residents have mixed reactions in terms of their expectations of the establishment of the new region on their livelihoods.

The conclusion and the outcome of this study cannot be generalized as a representation of the whole population of Oti Region due to a qualitative approach.

This study discovered country- and community-specific understanding, expectations and elucidations of socio-economic development.

The outcome of the study has expanded and further advanced the sparse literature in the domain, which could help politician and policymakers in future, policy direction and further help to ignite scholars' interest in the field in future

Managing the diversity of the enlarged European Union (EU) is a central task for European policies. It is argued that this diversity leads to the development of a core-periphery pattern, separating cores of economic strength from peripheral regions being on the margins and lagging behind with mainly rural areas playing the peripheral part. This chapter describes the approach taken by the FP7 EU research project RUFUS – Rural Future Networks. It concentrated on rural regions and tried to work out the implications of the diversity of European rural areas by creating an interdisciplinary typology. The RUFUS typology is based on nine economic, social and ecological indicators and included regions (NUT3 level) from 10 European countries. A factor and cluster analysis was performed leading to a set of types of rural areas displaying their strengths and weaknesses related to their economic, social and ecological characteristics. The analysis was performed with different combinations of countries. The data set based on countries within the EU15 led to a first typology of four types showing a specific distribution of strong(er) and weak(er) types of regions already functioning for a longer time in the context of EU integration. Including more Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries led to a set of five types combined with the change of type distribution within and between the countries. The approach is an easy to understand classification and visualisation tool to show the relative development status of European regions as well as the relationship of the status with their location (core or border region).

The study aims to examine the socio‐economic determinants of maternal health services utilization in Ghana.

Probit and ordered probit models are employed in this study.

The results generally indicate that most women in Ghana undertake the required visits for antenatal services and also take both doses of the tetanus toxoid vaccine as required by World Health Organization. However, the results show low levels of usage in terms of the other maternal health care services (i.e. prenatal care, delivery at a health facility, and postnatal care). There is clearly an urgent need to develop innovative strategies that will help upscale intervention especially for improvement in the use of these services by women in Ghana. The regression results reveal that utilization of maternal health services and intensity of use of antenatal services are influenced by age of mother, type of birth, education of mother, ethnicity, economic status, geographic location, residence, and religious affiliation. Obviously, this suggests that more than medical factors are responsible for the differences in the use of maternal health services by women in Ghana as well as the decision on the number of visits to undertake with respect to antenatal visits.

The findings of this study have important implications for health policy formulation targeted at improving maternal health care service utilization.