Historical path of IMEER of the NAS of Ukraine

The Historical Path of the SO IMPEER of the NAS of Ukraine

The evolutionary path of this powerful research team begins in 1970, with the creation of the Odesa Branch of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, which coincided with the intensification of the country’s socio-political and economic life, the expansion of opportunities for regional development, and the search for solutions to the new tasks of the state’s strategic development. In this context, the need to develop and intensify economic research clearly arose — especially in a direction and specialisation that would, above all, be connected with the development problems of the Southern region. Thus, the appearance of a new research unit in the system of Ukrainian academic science was demanded by life itself, by the national economic plans for the socio-economic and intellectual development of the state.

Founded in May 1970, the Odesa Branch of the Institute of Economics of the AS of the Ukrainian SSR was aimed at developing problems of increasing the efficiency of maritime transport and related branches of industry, the programme-target planning of the development of the production systems of southern Ukraine, the modelling of economic-ecological processes, and the economic study of marine resources.

Under the leadership of the Branch’s founder, Dr. Econ. Sci., Prof. M.T. Meleshkin, the efforts of the Branch’s researchers were directed primarily at solving the theoretical and practical tasks of the comprehensive development of the resources of the World Ocean and optimising the economy and ecology of coastal regions. He is the founder of a new scientific direction, “Econology”, whose basic principles and theoretical provisions were reflected in a number of his fundamental works.

The scientific developments and active stance of the Institute in the 1970s–80s made it possible to prove the futility and inefficiency of — and, on this basis, to halt — the implementation of projects to build the Kerch and Dnipro-Buh hydroelectric complexes, the Danube–Dnipro canal, and the Berezivka chemical plant, which posed a serious threat to the ecological balance of the region and to the development of the recreational potential of the Black Sea region, sectors that are priorities in socio-economic and ecological terms.

Incidentally, as early as 1976, in recognition of the significant contribution of the founder of our research team, Dr. Econ. Sci., Professor M.T. Meleshkin, to the development of economic science in Ukraine, he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

Over the years, renowned scholars and doctors of science worked at the Branch: A.I. Uyomov; L.V. Bartashov; A.A. Soyuzov; H.S. Bashkirov; H.S. Lytvynchuk; O.M. Bronfman; O.B. Horstko; S.I. Khristenko; V.S. Paniukov; N.H. Kovaliova; F.T. Zemlianskyi; I.M. Popova; L.S. Zahadska; B.I. Valuiev; O.V. Zhyvytskyi; P.S. Miroshnikov; O.P. Zaitsev; V.Ye. Hlushkov; R.O. Kryzhanovskyi; V.H. Kravchenko; A.A. Zyikov, and many others.

In 1991, taking into account the scientific achievements gained by the Branch and their relevance during Ukraine’s transition to market relations and — most importantly — the presence of powerful scientific potential, the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine decided to create, on the basis of the Odesa Branch of the Institute of Economics, an independent Institute of Market Problems and Economic-Ecological Research of the NAS of Ukraine.

On this occasion, the activity of the Institute’s team took on a new direction. The scientific schools, formed back on the foundations of the Branch, began to develop rapidly: the study of the economic-ecological problems of nature use and recreation in coastal regions; problems of the socio-economic development of the Ukrainian Black Sea region; economic problems of the development of maritime transport and the establishment and development of the transport services market; and problems of the development of the open economy and entrepreneurship.

The first results of their activity were a number of Institute initiatives aimed at the effective use of the rich maritime economic potential and the biological, mineral, recreational and other valuable resources of the Black and Azov Seas and other areas of the World Ocean, namely:

• coordination functions were carried out for developing the economic-ecological and social aspects of a scheme for the protection and rational use of water resources in the area of the Danube lakes, and alternative options for water use in the zone of the Sasyk reservoir and the Danube–Dniester irrigation system were proposed;
• the international investment project “EURAGATE” was proposed jointly with the company “Odesos Holding LTD” and the State Customs Committee, the main goal of which is the development of an open-economy policy in the Ukrainian Black Sea region on the basis of strengthening the region’s transit functions and joint entrepreneurship;
• a draft State Programme for the Socio-Economic Development of the Ukrainian Black Sea Region was developed, synthesising ideas about specific mechanisms for implementing the development strategy of all sectors in combination with the implementation of nationwide reforms, and much more.

Ensuring innovative inquiry and solving the tasks of the comprehensive development of economic research, the Institute’s team has always been aimed at solving the most important problems of our state’s economy.

The formation of directions connected with solving the problem of establishing market relations, from the very beginning of the Institute’s creation, aimed to study the patterns and processes of implementing the transition period, the transformation of economic relations in Ukraine, and the features of their manifestation in individual sectors of the economy and inter-sectoral economic complexes in coastal regions. Even the first results of the research conducted in recent years allow them to be characterised as new scientific achievements in approaches to the methodology of forming a strategy of economic reforms. The range of these results in completed and ongoing works is quite broad: from defining specific directions of the reform strategy — including overcoming rudimentary pre-commodity relations and developing optimal ratios between free market relations and the means of centralised state management — to improving the system of national accounting; from substantiating the goals, priorities and means of implementing the state policy of an open economy to the directions and volumes of structural transformations and the means of improving the economic mechanism in the maritime-economic and recreational complexes, in industry, transport, and so on.

The guarantee of the Institute’s achievements today and in the future is its scientific potential. A significant contribution to the establishment of the Institute and the development of its scientific directions is made by: Academician of the NAS of Ukraine B.V. Burkynskyi; doctors of science V.M. Stepanov, S.K. Kharichkov, M.I. Kotlubai, A.I. Butenko, V.O. Derhachov, O.M. Kotlubai, M.T. Prymachov, O.B. Alyokhin, T.P. Halushkina, O.M. Hromova, V.M. Osypov, O.V. Sadchenko and N.M. Andreeva; and a powerful team of more than 30 candidates of science.

Today, the fundamental and applied developments of the Institute’s scientific schools are aimed at solving topical problems of optimising the market relations of the national economy, and the strategy and tactics of sustainable, balanced socio-economic and economic-ecological development that determine the current state of both the Ukrainian Black Sea region and the country as a whole:

• the theory and methodology of restructuring economic complexes and forming mechanisms of institutional transformations in the economy;
• economic policy and mechanisms for ensuring the sustainable development and competitiveness of the Black Sea region’s economic complex and of the tourism and recreation sphere;
• the policy of institutional and organisational transformations and the formation of economic relations in the sphere of nature use and ensuring ecological security;
• maritime shipping policy, the development of transit potential, and the simplification of organisational procedures for carrying out intermodal transport;
• the strategy and mechanisms for strengthening the potential of the Ukrainian Black Sea region and overcoming the socio-economic disparities of its development.

The scientific potential and many years of experience in economic research allow the Institute’s team to conduct scientific inquiry simultaneously in the field of macroeconomics and in the field of regional and microeconomics, and to develop new methods in economic research.

In macroeconomics, the main attention is focused on the problems of the transformation of economic relations. The conducted research has shown the impossibility of an accelerated, so-called “revolutionary” approach to changing the forms and mechanisms of management. In particular, the influence of a number of objectively acting factors that hinder the formation of market relations within sufficiently short periods of time was identified and modelled, since it is precisely the underestimation of their action that is, first and foremost, the cause of the crisis situations in the socio-economic sphere that still accompany the development of Ukraine’s economy and whose further ignoring may cause even more powerful destructive processes.

The relevance of research in the macroeconomic direction is significantly reinforced in the context of today’s problems — namely, the search for well-grounded measures to overcome the consequences of the global crisis in the financial and economic sectors of Ukrainian society.

Research into the socio-economic processes taking place at the regional level aims to develop the main provisions of the state’s regional economic policy.

The Institute has developed the Concept of the Socio-Economic and Economic-Ecological Development of the Coastal Regions of Ukraine, the conceptual foundations of the organisational and economic regulation of the region’s scientific and technical development, and the Concept of Entrepreneurship Development in the Regions of Ukraine. The practical implementation of the latter was reflected in the corresponding programmes for the Odesa region.

A special place in the research is occupied by the issue of reconciling the interests of state and regional economic policy. The Institute was one of the first in Ukraine to raise the question of forming an open-economy policy as one of the most important strategic directions in the development of the state, and proposed the Concept of Creating Free Economic Zones as one of the realistically possible forms of the general theory of the open economy, taking into account the specifics of the socio-economic conditions in Ukraine.

The Institute’s scientific research and practical recommendations on forming the main provisions of Ukraine’s maritime policy, developing its transit potential, and significantly increasing the role and place of coastal regions in the stable process of our country’s integration into the international economic space are aimed in the same direction. Examples of systemic scientific research that determine the real prospects for the development of Ukraine’s transit function are the development of draft programme and regulatory-legal documents on the development of shipping, the rules for the carriage of foreign-trade and transit cargo in mixed land-water transport, the comprehensive use of the transport potential of the Ukrainian Lower Danube region, the development of port-industrial complexes in the south of Ukraine, and many others.

The regional aspect of researching many complex economic problems requires a holistic view and understanding of the directions, forms and methods of developing the region’s economy. This is precisely what prompted the Institute’s specialists to take the initiative in developing strategic directions for the socio-economic development of the Ukrainian Danube region, which was subsequently reflected in the State Programme for the Comprehensive Development of the Ukrainian Danube Region for 2004–2011.

Life itself requires economic science to react immediately to the pressing issues of the agenda. Therefore, among the Institute’s current priority tasks is the expert-analytical assessment and substantiation of the expediency of further economic activity and the regime of use of the Sasyk Estuary in the south of the Odesa region. We emphasise that this concerns an objective and impartial consideration of a number of negative economic-ecological phenomena that have developed in the basin of this unique water body — phenomena which, incidentally, were predicted by the Institute’s specialists back in the 1980s–90s.

Economic problems of the transport services market occupy an important place in the Institute’s research topics. The scientific novelty of this direction lies in the theoretical development of new — and the generalisation and refinement of a number of existing — provisions and knowledge, which together constitute the economic foundations for solving the nationwide problem of ensuring the accelerated development of national shipping and transport provision as a whole, as the basis for the accelerated economic growth of Ukrainian society and the improvement of people’s welfare. Within this research, the idea was put forward and the theoretical foundations were substantiated for the development of commercial-industrial shipping as a real manifestation of the global processes of the liberalisation of economic relations and the globalisation of the world economy within the Ukrainian economic space and the existing legal framework.

On the basis of many years of comprehensive research, fundamentally new theoretical provisions and methodical recommendations were formulated for using, in the interests of the national economy, the conditions of the freight market, the economic-legal aspects of the development of world shipping (including individual transport-technological systems), the trends in the manifestation of transformation processes in Ukraine’s transport system and their adequacy to global development directions, the features of improving the organisational-economic mechanism of the work of transport junction points and the development of transport-production systems in coastal regions, and the organisation of new economic relations and the formation of economic regulators of the processes of development and interaction with a fundamentally new type of clientele.

The theoretical and methodological results of research in this scientific direction formed the basis of the Concept of the National Maritime Policy of Ukraine, initiated by the Institute, the draft of which was used in preparing the decision of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine of 16 May 2008 “On Measures to Ensure the Development of Ukraine as a Maritime State”, put into effect by the well-known Decree of the President of Ukraine, and a number of draft regulatory-legal acts that are now being developed for its implementation. The most important of these is the draft Maritime Doctrine of Ukraine.

Many years of scientific accumulation in researching economic-ecological problems were enriched with new approaches to solving the tasks of managing the sustainable development of territorial-production systems and natural-economic complexes under the conditions of the transition period, on the basis of the theoretical and methodical support for implementing management mechanisms adapted to market conditions in the sphere of nature use and the development of economic-ecological systems.

Within the framework of the economic-ecological theory of sustainable development, a concept for reforming the nature-use system (using the example of coastal regions) was developed, based on the principles of resource-ecological security at all levels of the organisation of social production (local, regional, national and international), socio-ecological priorities in the distribution and development of productive forces in coastal regions, the priority of resort nature use, and active ecological adaptation.

On the basis of theoretical work and conceptual provisions, concepts were developed for the regional use of natural resources and the protection of the Black Sea from pollution, the foundations for forming the economic-ecological and regulatory base for managing nature use in coastal regions, and a mechanism for forming natural-economic recreational complexes.

Many developments on resource-ecological topics were proposed for practical implementation at both the state and regional levels. Thus, it was at the Institute that the draft Law of Ukraine “On Nature Use in the Marine Coastal Zone” was first developed. It was the Institute’s specialists who showed persistence and made a significant contribution to forming the main conceptual ideas about the development of scientific research of the World Ocean and the formation of the maritime economic complex in the interests of the resource-ecological security and socio-economic development of Ukraine.

The realities of political reforms and economic life delayed the implementation of the Institute’s developments, but today interest in them and the public need for them have not only not faded but, on the contrary, have grown significantly. The aforementioned May (2008) Decree of the President of Ukraine set the task of developing a National Programme for the Research and Use of the Resources of the Azov-Black Sea Basin and other regions of the World Ocean for 2009–2034, in the implementation of which — we hope — the experience and scientific developments of the Institute of past years, as well as the scientific potential of today, will find their place.

In addition to the above, within the direction of the economic-ecological problems of nature use and recreation of the Black Sea region, developments were carried out related to the development of the theoretical basis of the integrated management of nature use and environmental protection activity in the marine coastal zone of Ukraine to promote its sustainable development. Many examples could be given illustrating the effectiveness and applied nature of these developments. The constraints of a newspaper publication allow us to mention only, for example, the draft Concept of Ukraine’s Transition to Sustainable Development (2006), the draft National Concept for the Introduction and Development of Environmentally Clean Production in Ukraine (2006), and the participation of the Institute’s specialists in developing the draft Strategy of the National Environmental Policy of Ukraine until 2020 (2007), which are currently being considered by the highest bodies of executive and legislative power as a basis for adopting corresponding legislative acts of the state.

The scientific level of the achievements of the Institute’s specialists in the field of problems of regional development and nature use has been highly appreciated by the state and the scientific community of Ukraine. Thus, Academician of the NAS of Ukraine B.V. Burkynskyi is a laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine in the Field of Science and Technology for 2006 and, jointly with doctors of economic sciences, professors V.M. Stepanov and S.K. Kharichkov, is also a laureate of the M.I. Tugan-Baranovskyi Prize of the NAS of Ukraine in the field of economics for 2005. The Institute’s scholars have been awarded certificates of the Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and receive named scholarships of the President of Ukraine and the Presidium of the NAS of Ukraine.

Recently, the Institute has launched active theoretical and applied research on the problems of resource-ecological security as an important component of Ukraine’s national security.

In particular, within the framework of scientific cooperation with the academies of sciences of neighbouring countries, the Institute carried out research projects, including the topic “Scientific Foundations of the Integrated Management of the Use of the Resources of the Sea of Azov and Ensuring the Economic-Ecological Security of the Azov Region”, which corresponds to the implementation of Ukraine’s economic interests.

Over the period of its existence, the Institute has prepared more than 300 scientific monographs and published 86 collections of scientific works under the general title “Economic Innovations”. Thanks to the active work of the postgraduate and doctoral programmes and the specialised academic council for awarding the scientific degrees of Doctor and Candidate of Economic Sciences, more than 400 candidate and 100 doctoral dissertations have been defended at the Institute. The Institute’s specialists carry out active scientific-consulting activity in the Odesa Regional State Administration, the Odesa Regional and City Councils, and so on. It should be especially noted that the Institute takes an active stance in cooperation with the higher education institutions of southern Ukraine in the field of training bachelors and masters in economics, management and international economic relations, and the training and certification of scientific personnel of economic specialisation. As a positive, we should note that we have moved from previously developed traditional forms of cooperation on these issues to the newest forms of joint work with leading universities in research-educational complexes and branches of chairs.

To date, four research-educational complexes are already operating — with Odesa State Economic University, Odesa National Academy of Food Technologies, Odesa National Polytechnic University, and the Admiral Makarov National University of Shipbuilding (Mykolaiv). The signing of joint agreements on the work of research-educational complexes with Odesa State Environmental University is next in line. Branches of the chairs of economics and management of Odesa National Maritime University and the Odesa National Maritime Academy operate at the Institute.

Recently, a glorious date in the history of national science was celebrated — the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. More than a third of this period falls on the history of the creation, formation and development of our Institute, which today is one of the leading research units of the National Academy of Sciences in the Southern region of Ukraine in the field of the social sciences and humanities — namely, the economic sciences.