  We measure synergy for the Russian national, provincial, and regional
innovation systems as reduction of uncertainty using mutual information among
the three distributions of firm sizes, technological knowledge-bases of firms,
and geographical locations. Half a million data at firm level in 2011 were
obtained from the Orbis database of Bureau Van Dijk. The firm level data were
aggregated at the levels of eight Federal Districts, the regional level of 83
Federal Subjects, and the single level of the Russian Federation. Not
surprisingly, the knowledge base of the economy is concentrated in the Moscow
region (22.8%); St. Petersburg follows with 4.0%. Only 0.4% of the firms are
classified as high-tech, and 2.7% as medium-tech manufacturing (NACE, Rev. 2).
Except in Moscow itself, high-tech manufacturing does not add synergy to any
other unit at any of the various levels of geographical granularity; instead it
disturbs regional coordination even in the region surrounding Moscow ("Moscow
Region"). In the case of medium-tech manufacturing, there is also synergy in
St. Petersburg. Knowledge-intensive services (KIS; including laboratories)
contribute 12.8% to the economy in terms of establishments and contribute to
the synergy in all Federal Districts (except the North-Caucasian Federal
District), but only in 30 of the 83 Federal Subjects. The synergy in KIS is
concentrated in centers of administration. Unlike Western European countries,
the knowledge-intensive services (which are often state-affiliated) thus
provide backbone to an emerging knowledge-based economy at the level of Federal
Districts, but the economy is otherwise not knowledge-based (except for the
Moscow region).
