Regional Spatially-Neutral and Local Target Focused Policies: Issues of Choice

The paper analyzes modern principles of regional policy and whether they are applicable to the Russian economy. We consider, on the one hand, the principles of the World Bank policy based on a spatially neutral approach to choosing measures of regional policy, and, on the other hand, the EU policy which is focused on local targets and insists on a necessity of differentiated regional incentives. The arguments of both approaches are based on the different concepts, i.e. the theory of the new economic geography and theory of endogenous growth