The authors of this article on the basis of «Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation Data» (2005) (developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - OECD and the Statistical Office of the European Union - Eurostat) and best current statistical practices of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) define the development trends for innovation statistics. This publication describes the content of the basic terms and definitions, characterizing investment activity of economic entities - enterprises in accordance with international standards, including issues of forming a circle of reporting organizations, coverage of economic activities, system of basic indicators for the survey program, statistical tools for data collection on innovation. Techniques for statistical observation on innovations in the selected CIS member states, challenges and issues of creating harmonized innovation statistics on the space of CIS countries are reviewed.

The existing international trade statistics is an indispensable tool of economic analysis, though its relevance may be questioned. In the world of global value chains, it is essential to understand that a good or service produced in one country and purchased in another one tend to embody value added of diverse national and sectoral origin. The article reviews the analytic capabilities offered by an alternative estimation of international trade in terms of value added movement of trade flows. Experimental data from OECD, WTO and World Input-Output Database project is used to quantify Russia’s role as an exporter of value added within the global value chains.

In addition to standard methods of non-market valuation, a novel approach has recently emerged that suggests valuing non-marketed goods on the basis of households' self-valuations of their happiness. The fundamental assumption is that such self-valuations provide consistent information of households' utility. The new method allows tackling some problems of more traditional approaches including the revealed preferences method, which is based on the analysis of factual consumer choice and real expenditures on risk reduction, and the contingent valuation method, which is based on subjective estimates of a public good's monetary value. The article discusses both positive and negative characteristics of the proposed method.

The article reviews time series and structure of gross agricultural output during implementation of state programs since 2006, contribution of selected types of enterprises into it, variation in the contribution by region and individual factors that is estimated using decomposition method for composite additive, multiplicative indicators and ratios. The author's conclusions are drawn based on the analysis of a large array of statistical information presented in spreadsheet format «Time series and structure of gross agricultural output in the Russian Federation in 2006-2013», «Regions of the Russian Federation by the growth rate of agricultural production in 2006-2012», «Contribution of types of enterprises into the variance in gross agricultural output growth of the Russian Federation in 2006-2012, percent of total», «Time series of feed consumption and milk yield in all enterprises of all types in the Russian Federation».

The article is devoted to evaluating the capacity of official statistics to reflect improvements and unresolved issues amidst the development of the complex of social infrastructure at the regional level and differentiation of the situation in the municipalities. Significant limitations in the evaluation of the situation prevailing at the district and settlement level are revealed.

Traditionally statistics is a special branch of human activity, which allows obtaining essential quantitative characteristics of a wide variety of social-and-economic phenomena and processes. In this regard, a comprehensive analysis of the role that Russian statistics plays in the public life has rightfully great practical significance and arises heightened interest among general public.

The article considers potential of composite indicators of business tendencies surveys to measure short-term cycles of economic dynamics and presents the main results of the empirical study of the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI HSE), combining key information on sectoral surveys business trends in real, consumer and service sectors of the Russian economy for the I quarter 1998 - I quarter 2014. The main goal of the study is an answer to questions about admissibility to use business tendencies monitoring results in composition of the national information infrastructure. Do, for example, short-term trends of economic sentiment reflect the basic trajectory of real economy development for the period under review? Is it possible to use ESI HSE time series as an indicator of phases and turning points of growth cycles in the dynamics of statistical macro-aggregates, namely, volume index of the Gross Domestic Product? Key findings indicate scientifically valid ability of business tendencies monitoring indicators to be a part of the national corpus of short-term cyclical indicators and statistically significant admissibility of their practical usage in this capacity. This expands considerably information capabilities of business tendencies monitoring in structural-spatial analysis of entrepreneurial behavior and in identification of cyclical development of the economy of the country in temporal aspect.

In this paper tasks of simulating scientific domains and forecasting their state are considered. Graphosemantic modeling techniques for scientific domains and simulation-based forecasting of their state are introduces. The domain model of research projects supported by the Russian Humanitarian Foundation (RFH) in 2010-2013 serves as an example. Forecasting results for the state of subject domain in 2014 are presented.

The article is devoted to features of reproduction of labor resources, which create sectoral segmentation in labor market. Based on statistical data the author shows jobs in what quantity and of which quality are reproduced in a segmented market. It was discovered that predominately new jobs are created in those segments of the labor market, where market principles are implemented, whereas in segments formed under the influence of rental factors, it is weak or non-existent. It is the author’s opinion that, it can be explained by the fact that jobs are being cut in the current investment sectors, while in the market infrastructure segments there is growth.

The article reviews the dynamics (for the Post-Soviet period as a as a whole and its stages) of key macroeconomic indicators by the example of regions of the Russian Federation. Three stages - 1991-1997, 1998-2002, 2003-2012 - are characterized by their own structural changes in economy, import substitution and economic growth features. Recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and shift in regional development trends are described. Spatial regression model is constructed based on data of 2009 that define dominant influence on the gross regional product (GRP) time series of consumer demand trend compared with the trend in investment demand.

This article states that for the development of the state statistics in Turkmenistan was prepared a number of methodological documents; the work was done to reduce respondent burden by revising the content of state statistical reporting forms, to find an optimum combination of continuous and sampling methods of statistical observation and to improve current statistical classifications. At this stage of national statistics development, wide use of information technologies to collect statistical data is considered as a priority task. The Interagency Statistical Council under TurkmenStat was created in order to implement the Law of Turkmenistan «On Statistics» (2012) (which is based on generalized national and international experience fundamental principles of official statistics are reflected) as an advisory body for coordinating, regulating interagency methodology and statistical organization issues, discussing and coordinating plans for conducting departmental statistics. The author emphasizes that drafted in TurkmenStat work entitled «System of Socio-Economic Indicators and Metadata According to International Standards» was carried out due to the necessity to improve the quality of state statistics, depending on the complexity of the statistical tools for assessment of socio-economic processes in the country and sophistication of system of statistical metadata. In particular, in this system of socio-economic indicators are harmoniously incorporated indicators that reflect regional specificities.

Taking into account the important role that regional policy of a country plays in a countrywide development, the necessity of statistical information to be available for assessing the efficiency of the implemented regional policy and reflecting social-and-economic development dynamics of regions - is beyond question. The article considers applicability of SNA indicators at regional level, including estimating the Gross Regional Product (GRP). In the context of providing full GRP coverage of the basic kinds of economic activities, that tend to remain out of statistical system’s coverage and make a basis for the non-observed economy (NOE) within the meaning of SNA, are characterized. Methods for measuring the non-observed economy at regional level are reviewed using mainly the example of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

This study empirically examines the long run equilibrium relationship between South Africa’s exports and imports using quarterly data from 1985 to 2012. The theoretical framework used for the study is based on Johansen’s Maximum Likelihood cointegration technique which tests for both the existence and number of cointegration vectors that exists. The study finds that both the series are integrated of order one and are cointegrated. A statistically significant cointegrating relationship is found to exist between exports and imports. The study models this unique linear and lagged relationship using a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM).The findings of the study confirm the existence of a long run equilibrium relationship between exports and imports.