According to the authors, external and internal challenges of Russia, its geopolitical position, as well as Jesuit Wester Russophobia encourage our country to join the group of undisputed leaders of global economic, social and political development. At the same time, preservation of production relations, existing in our socio-economic system now, is a powerful brake on the way of scientific and technological progress and causes significant underdevelopment of the societyэs productive forces. Such a state of productive force does not provide necessary qualitative leap in the social development of Russia and creates unsatisfactory prospects for its safe, sovereign and holistic existence. A systematic approach to the nature and essence of the productive force proves that the main and the single productive force of our society can only be a man, his immediate work. At the same time, the scientific-technological revolution (STR) and the process of conditionally digital socialization (education) are the dominant conditions for effective development of productive force. However, the lack of balance between individuals’ education and upbringing inevitably leads to manifestation of scientific and technical extremism, which can create conditions for destruction of the biosocium itself. One of the main results of scientific-technological revolution is also transformation of scientific and technical production into the first stage of social reproduction, while industrial-manufacturing production is postponed to the second stage. In addition, the key to scientific-technical leap is creating conditions for effective early identification of individuals with the highest level of biological sociality inclinations (with an increased ability to education and training) and their subsequent highly effective socialization (first of all, we are speaking about development of scientific and creative thinking). The main scientific-technical and socio-political condition, providing maximum efficiency of socialization of such individuals and transformation of scientific-technical production into accelerator of social reproduction, is bringing in equivalence production relations and the productive force of society.

The present article dwells on the author’s methodology of managing the competitiveness of a machine-building complex at the micro level, that is, at the enterprise level. According to the author, introduction of new progressive tools and management principles in each particular enterprise will allow not only to increase significantly competitiveness of the machine-building complex as a whole, but also to elaborate successful long-term strategy for the economy development.

Public-private partnership (PPP) is an effective mechanism of interaction between government and business for realization of complex and socially significant projects. The analysis of statistical sources made it possible to draw conclusions about the positive impact of investment in major infrastructure projects on GDP growth in both developing and developed countries. Having analyzed the definitions of PPP from different sources, author has identified the main principles, forms and characteristics of PPP, and suggested his own model of interaction between government and business. In present study special attention is paid to consideration of PPP contribution to the strategic development of key sectors of the economy in the context of transition to the sixth technological order. As a result of the study, perspective points of development of this mechanism in the sphere of high technologies have been formulated.

The possibility of the introduction of appropriate organization of professional retraining and the introduction of information technology structure in the machine-building enterprises. Educational institution is considered as the intellectual element of the logistics chain in vocational education. For the development of fundamentally new technologies proposed organization process reengineering involving professionals with a fundamentally new knowledge. As a criterion of the effectiveness of retraining is considered business income. The conditions to ensure the quality of training, developing strategic direction in improving the capacity of the enterprise. The proposed mechanism has shown the possibility of finding reserves to ensure the preparation of a management efficiency experts with balanced powers and responsibilities of participants in the introduction of new technologies.

The article proves that industrial enterprises develop most quickly and qualitatively in the presence of modern infrastructure, contributing to reduce time and labor costs. In turn, it is inexpedient to build infrastructure facilities on territories where there are no large industrial companies and their functioning is not expected. Actual examples of interdependent development of industry and the infrastructure sector are given (on the example of the transport sector) and a demonstrative correlation-regression model is constructed.

The article presents analysis results of medium-term economic cycles, calculated on the basis of statistical data of one of the regions of the Russian Federation. For analysis, the average cycles of Simon Kuznets (construction cycles), the small investment cycles of economic activity of Clement Juglar and short business cycles of Joseph Kitchin are taken. Bringing together the graphs of three cycles shows the convergence at the bottom point of three medium-term economic cycles in the period of 2019–2020. A conclusion is made about the need for investment growth in 2018. Also a graph is given with a large cycle of capital accumulation by Giovanni Arrighi, characterizing the cyclical change in the model of world development in connection with transition to a new dominant resource, as a result of which the country — the world leader — changes. Thus, according to J. Arrighi, the American cycle should be replaced by the Asian one, which is why 2018 is designated as the year of beginning of the active phase of the US struggle to maintain its domination. According to the authors, realization of J. Arrighi’s cycle took place meanwhile the center of the world’s money emission was moving following the center of world commodity production. It is concluded that the considered cyclicity will be the background for pursuing the economic policy in the regions of Russia, but will not determine it.

The article dwells on development of renewable energy sources in Germany. The author describes the tools of the FRG energy policy applied to implement projects in the field of renewable energy and analyzes the main problems of renewable energy industry.

The paper examines the condition, problems and prospects of development of Russian pharmaceutical industry. The majority of medicines (82%) produced in Russia are generics. The share of innovative drugs is small — only 18%. The Ministry of health of the Russian Federation plans by the year 2025 to improve this ratio to 35:65. Therefore, the main challenge facing the pharmaceutical industry lies in the active development of innovative medicines and development of the technology of their production. The article studies three major industry issues and solutions to them: shortage of domestic pharmaceutical substances, lack of qualified specialists with modern skills and lack of development of medical products’ domestic production. The article shows that thanks to the timely adoption of the state development strategy “Pharma-2020” (2009) and the Federal target program “Development of pharmaceutical and medical industry for 2013–2020” and their practical implementation, the above-mentioned problems are being successfully resolved. The main conclusion of this paper is that the expansion and technological modernization of the domestic pharmaceutical industry and medical devices’ production is a task of utmost national importance. The contribution of the industry to national GDP today is 1%. However, the potential of the industry is that its share in GDP could grow to 3-5% in the next 10-15 years. In addition, the industry plays an extremely important role in solving social and demographic problems, as well as improving the quality of human capital.

In the article the author addresses the problem of assessing effectiveness of innovation strategies of socially responsible businesses and provides an overview of the most promising and relevant approaches to evaluation. In the author’s field of view there are such approaches as evaluation of stock exchange indices, the status of socially responsible projects in business organizations, non-financial reporting, introduction of KPI indicators in implementation of innovative strategies, monitoring, rational and ethical approaches, as well as the evaluation methods described in the manual by G.F. Ostapenko “Corporate Social Responsibility” and in the article by O.А. Leshchenko “Modern methods of assessing effectiveness of companies activities in the CSR field”.

From the perspective of modern physics, the article aims to describe the economic agent meeting the criteria of homo economicus today and to assess the possibility of creating an economic model with the features of this agent in mind.