Assessing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Trends in Socio-Economic Development of an Industrial Region in Russia

The article is devoted to a study of the socio-economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. A review of the literature showed that, as a rule, studies of assessing the impact of a pandemic are limited to an analysis of statistical data for 2020 in comparison with 2019 and 2021, without taking into account the socio-economic trends that have developed in the territory. In order to analyze the scale of the problems and develop response measures to the consequences of the pandemic, it is extremely important to form a scientific tool for assessing them. The purpose of the article is to assess the impact of the COVID‑19 pandemic on changing trends in the main indicators of the socio-economic development of the region. The hypothesis of the study is that the degree and duration of the impact of the pandemic on one or another indicator of development is not the same. The research methodology is based on tracking the prevailing trends in indicators before and during the pandemic, as well as on comparing the averages of individual indicators using the Student and Mann-Whitney criteria. In addition, an analysis was made of the presence of structural shifts for the entire analyzed period using the Chow test. The application of the proposed approach for the analyzed periods (before and during the pandemic) allows us to see the presence of heterogeneity or, conversely, homogeneity in the data for the analyzed indicators. The results of calculating their values give an idea of the degree of impact of the pandemic or its absence. The proposed approach was tested on the example of the Sverdlovsk region. The results showed that the impact of the pandemic turned out to be instantaneous, but the degree and duration of the impact for individual sectors of the economy and society are not the same. We have formed four trajectories of the Sverdlovsk region's indicators related to the pandemic: (1) deterioration of the situation without a subsequent recovery trend; (2) deterioration of the situation with subsequent stabilization; (3) temporary deterioration of the situation and the resumption of a positive trend; (4) no significant changes. The proposed approach has a high theoretical and methodological significance; its application will help to solve similar problems of trend research. The results obtained show areas that require additional support for the recovery of the economy and society.