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Planners of the Soviet pulp and paper industry are constantly faced with the problem: which investment policy guarantees the best location structure? Should one invest in existing localities or expand to new areas, especially in heavily forested parts of Siberia? A location theory for the pulp and paper industry, based on three factors (markets, wood raw materials, relative costs) has been suggested by the Soviet authors Antonov and Trusova. In the present study the theory is â for the first time â given empirical contents and the feasible areas for future growth of the industry are tentatively determined. One of the main findings of the study is the detecting of considerable unutilized wood reserves in the European USSR. This supports those Soviet views advocating a European-oriented location in investment strategy for the industry, as market and cost factors are unfavourable to Siberian location. The PDF includes a summary in Finnish.

A theory that areal variations in economic development in the USSR (analyzed at the oblast level for most republics) depend on regional economic structure, economic policy, cultural factors, and the center-periphery dichotomy is tested via simple regression analysis, using retail sales per capita as the indicator of economic level. The independent variables are: share of urban population (for economic structure), investments (for economic policy), percentage of Moslem population (for the cultural factor), and distance from Moscow (for the periphery effect). All of these variables except distance were significant in explaining the real variation in retail sales per capita.

The article examines Finnish industrial buyers' evaluation of and attitudes toward products and suppliers of the Russian Federation, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Hungary. Success in global marketing necessitates a clear understanding of export and import behavior and performance of domestic companies. The changing global marketing environment of today forces companies of all sizes to consider a variety of foreign sources of product supply for increased competitiveness. The article concludes that since the start of economic reforms and transformation processes in these countries in the early and mid-1990s, marketing communication and product quality have improved substantially, but the record on price competitiveness, distribution, marketing logistics and delivery schedules is mixed.