The catastrophe theory as a conceptual and methodological basis for assessing the stability of socio-economic systems

Abstract

There has been proposed a conceptual approach to studying the instability of main indicators of socio-economic development of Ukraine’s economy aimed at solving problems of assessment, analysis and forecasting the state of territorial systems and providing for the implementation of three major steps: assessment of the dynamics of socio-economic indicators of territorial development and the extent of their relationship, building catastrophe models of dynamics of socio-economic indicators of territorial development, analysis of instability of socio-economic systems. A study of the development dynamics of Ukraine’s economy in terms of the most significant macroeconomic indicators characterizing the state of industrial production, construction, employment, and demographic processes have been carried out. There revealed the instability and non-linearity of their relationship, occurrence of bifurcations and a high probability of catastrophes in the following research areas: dependence of the GDP on the volume of construction works, which makes it possible to determine the presence of the construction crisis in the economy; dependence of the GDP on the level of migration and natural increase in the population of Ukraine, which presents objective information about the demographic crisis in the country. The analytical results obtained can serve a basis for of the concept of regional policy transformation, implementation of investment and strategic programs aimed at stimulating investment of progressive structural changes in the regional and territorial perspective and crisis management.