DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND HUMAN CAPITAL AS DRIVERS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE'S AGRICULTURAL AND INDUSTRIAL SECTORS: A PANEL ASSESSMENT UNDER WARTIME CONDITIONS

Анотація

The chapter examines the interconnection between human capital formation, internet infrastructure, and the sustainable development of Ukraine’s agricultural and industrial sectors under conditions of ongoing armed conflict and ESG-oriented post-war recovery. A balanced panel regression model of higher education demand across 25 regions, structured into seven analytically distinct groups (capital, western, central, three near-front directions, and frontline oblasts), is estimated using real USEDE (EDEBO) admission data for 2016–2025 and verified regional wage data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine (Derzhstat) and index.minfin.com.ua. Controlling for the regional network of higher-education institutions and secondary schools and for air-raid alert intensity raises the model’s explanatory power substantially (R²=0.85) and isolates a structurally significant frontline demand deficit (β=−0.80, p<0.001) and a net wartime-year effect (β=0.38, p<0.01), while the three near-front groups (northern, eastern, southern) lose individual significance once these structural controls are introduced — in a simpler specification without these controls, wage elasticity itself is significant (β=1.09, p=0.01). A parallel analysis of the USEDE (EDEBO) competitive-admission registry (KONKURS, 2019–2025; bachelor’s degree, full-time mode, all specialities, aggregated from over 6,000 admission lines) documents the structural divergence between humanities/legal specialities (highest competitive scores) and industrial/agricultural specialities (lowest competitive scores), alongside the 2025 reform of the national specialty classification code system. The chapter positions human capital within the structure of real, externally verified international digitalisation indices (UN E-Government Development Index, Network Readiness Index, Global Innovation Index), showing that Ukraine’s People/Human-Capital components consistently outperform its Technology components. A descriptive national-level analysis of agricultural profitability and household internet penetration (2018–2023) documents a synchronous movement of both indicators around the 2022 wartime shock, though data limitations preclude a regional causal panel estimate. Taken together, the chapter substantiates digital infrastructure investment as a policy-relevant priority in Ukraine’s reconstruction agenda, while explicitly distinguishing verified empirical findings from descriptive observations.

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