Article

Dynamics of Russia’s competitive positions on foreign markets

Authors:
  • Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

The article considers main trends in the competitive positions of Russia on foreign markets by product groups on the basis of UN foreign trade statistics across the period 2002–2011. A summary rating of the export competitiveness of Russian manufacturers is developed and calculated by product groups, based on several indicators: export growth, changes in the unit value of exported products, as well as the trade imbalance coefficient. Changes in trends in the postcrisis period are emphasized.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... The less detailed breakdowns were used in their work by Xiadoi and Xiaozhong [89], who focused only on single-digit sorting in their analysis of Chinese foreign trade comparative advantages. Dnidchenko and Salnikov [90] summarize the onelevel code into five groups, including agriculture and food products, energy resources, raw materials and supplies, consumer goods, and capital goods, to evaluate the competitiveness of Russia on foreign markets. Ignjatijevic et al. [83] combine the two-digit commodity groups into four consequent groups (agricultural products, food, primary products, and industrial products) to analyse the competitiveness of the Danube region. ...
Article
Full-text available
The question of the sources of agricultural competitiveness is widely discussed on the farm and sectoral levels in the European Union. This paper assesses the competitiveness of the plant production using the combination of trade measures and strategic management measures in the selected European countries related to the Czech Republic. Thus, the paper evaluates and identifies the sources of competitiveness of plant production. In the case of Belgium and the Netherlands, labour and capital factors have a significant influence on production; in the case of the new member states, these factors are less important, and, conversely, market competitiveness factors are more crucial. The continuous convergence process between Belgium and the Netherlands is illustrated. The divergence between the Netherlands and the rest of the countries is also visible. There is a stable connection between the Czech Republic and Austria, France, and Slovakia. It can be mentioned that there is no statistically significant difference in the comparative advantage between 2005 and 2019, except in the case of France. Analysing sources of competitiveness among the countries of interest is a possible tool for the future direction of trade policies.
... В работе (Salnikov, Galimov, 2006) выявлены факторы конкурентоспособности основных отраслей отечественной эконо-мики. В статье (Gnidchenko, Salnikov, 2013) проводился расчет сравнительных преимуществ по укрупненным товарным группам, что позволило оценить динамику конкурентоспособности РФ за 2002-2011 гг. На базе полученных результатов разработан сводный рейтинг экспортной конкурентоспособности российских производителей. ...
Article
Full-text available
Competitiveness is one of the most frequently used concepts in the economic literature. Russian scientific journals have accumulated a large stock of research on approaches to the empirical assessment of competitiveness and competitiveness enhancement policies. However, so far there has been no attempt to carry out a comprehensive review of these studies. This paper is aimed to describe the current state and dynamics of Russian research on the topic of competitiveness, indexed by the most important in Russia scientific electronic library: eLIBRARY.ru. The key result of the article is the systematization of the main directions of studies performed by Russian researchers in the field of competitiveness from 2000 to 2020. The article shows that the dynamics of publications on this topic corresponds to the general trends of growth in the number of materials with a gradual decrease in the share of high-quality articles as well as the distribution of publications on the topic of competitiveness by journals and affiliations of authors. The evolution of trends in the choice of tools for improving competitiveness in Russian science is considered. The main practical use of this paper is a comprehensive review of Russian research on competitiveness, which can be beneficial for researchers who conduct empirical competitiveness assessments
Article
Purpose : is to form a conceptual approach to the analysis of the macroeconomic effects of external sanctions based on increasing the information content of the use of technical indicators in assessing the stability and vulnerability of the national economy to the effects of discriminatory restrictions in foreign economic activity. Methods: the study is based on the processing and analysis of data obtained as a result of content analysis of a significant number of scientific, scientific-practical, and expert sources of information. Methods of scientific generalization and classification, economic, expert and statistical analysis were used. Results : the analysis of the impact of sanctions restrictions on the key indicators of the characteristics of sustainable and innovative development of the discriminated national economy is carried out. An approach to assessing the impact of sanctions is presented based on a conjugate analysis of the dynamics of target groupings of indicators. An example of calculations, visualization and interpretation of the results of assessing sanctions resistance and export-import dependence of the national economy based on a set of technical indicators for significant areas of socio-economic development of the discriminated country is illustrated. The scope of application of the proposed approach in the formation of the development strategy and program (in terms of the implementation of the process of import substitution, ensuring technological independence and structural adaptation of the economy) is justified, taking into account the risks of sanctions restrictions. Conclusions and Relevance : the proposed approach to the analysis of sanctions restrictions based on the combined use of technical criteria for the dynamics of grouped indicators provides an increase in the reliability of estimates of their negative impact. However, aggregated estimates do not allow us to justify selective and targeted measures aimed at adapting the institutional and organizational conditions of the activities of specific economic agents in key areas of the national economy. A possible direction for further research may be the development of methodological and analytical tools for assessing the sanctions stability of economic sectors to substantiate the priorities of ensuring their technological independence.
Article
Full-text available
The paper is devoted to the study of Russia’s export specialization in the countries of Africa in the period from 2001 to 2017. A comprehensive analysis of the dynamics, the commodity and geographical structure of Russian exports to the African continent has been carried out. Using bilateral trade data for product groups at the level of two digits of the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS), this study examines the main patterns of comparative advantage in Russia’s trade with the countries of the region in the early 21st century. Based on the calculation results of the bilateral revealed comparative advantage index (RCA), authors identified a group of Russia’s trade partners in Africa, characterized by the largest number of export specialization product groups: Algeria, Angola, Guinea, Egypt, South Africa. Comparative analysis of Russia’s export specialization in Africa with the main partners in terms of trade turnover indicates, that Russia has more diverse comparative advantages in trade with some African countries (17 product groups), than with European ones, such as Germany (9 product groups) and Netherlands (8 groups). The study shows that Russia has export specialization in the following main product groups in African countries: HS 84 ‘Nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances; parts thereof ’, HS 85‘Electrical machinery and equipment and parts thereof ’, HS 87 ‘Vehicles other than railway or tramway rolling-stock, and parts and accessories thereof ’, HS 48‘Paper and paperboard’ and HS 10‘Cereals’. The authors revealed, that the intensity of Russia’s export specialization in African countries increases with the augmentation of the technical complexity of products exported. It proves that Russian industrial products have competitive advantages in the African market. The development and strengthening of economic cooperation with Africa is one of the most important direction of non-commodity and non-energy exports expansion and geographical diversification of Russian trade. The paper concludes by discussing the promising avenues for the future Russian-African export partnership.
Article
Full-text available
This paper provides an analysis of Balassa’s ‘revealed comparative advantage’ (RCA). It shows that when using RCA, it should be adjusted such that it becomes symmetric around its neutral value. The proposed adjusted index is called ‘revealed symmetric comparative advantage’ (RSCA). The theoretical discussion focuses on the properties of RSCA and empirical evidence, based on the Jarque–Bera test for normality of the regression error terms, using both the RCA and RSCA indices. We compare RSCA to other measures of international trade specialization including the Michaely index, the Contribution to Trade Balance, Chi Square, and Bowen’s Net Trade Index. The result of the analysis is that RSCA—on balance—is the best measure of comparative advantage.
Article
Full-text available
We establish the following stylized facts: (1) Exports are characterized by Big Hits, (2) the Big Hits change from one period to the next, and (3) these changes are not explained by global factors like global commodity prices. These conclusions are robust to excluding extractable products (oil and minerals) and other commodities. Moreover, African Big Hits exhibit similar patterns as Big Hits in non-African countries. We also discuss some concerns about data quality. These stylized facts are inconsistent with the traditional view that sees African exports as a passive commodity endowment, where changes are driven mostly by global commodity prices. In order to better understand the determinants of export success in Africa we interviewed several exporting entrepreneurs, government officials and NGOs. Some of the determinants that we document are conventional: moving up the quality ladder, utilizing strong comparative advantage, trade liberalization, investment in technological upgrades, foreign ownership, ethnic networks, and personal foreign experience of the entrepreneur. Other successes are triggered by idiosyncratic factors like entrepreneurial persistence, luck, and cost shocks, and some of the successes occur in areas that usually fail.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
Article
Full-text available
The recently proposed additive measures of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) have been argued as better alternatives to the Balassa Index. This note builds on those suggestions and provides a framework to assess their applicability by means of their consistency across the dimensions and inferences that the indices' informational content allow. A formal empirical investigation supports the presented arguments that the proposed additive constructs of RCA possess certain inconsistencies that may obscure comparative analyses based on them, whereas alternative additive measures proposed here are shown to be more consistent over space and time, and hence may serve as better instruments in related quantitative research.
Article
Full-text available
This article shows that the distribution of the standard measure of revealed comparative advantage (RCA), which runs from 0 to 8, has problematic properties. Due to its multiplicative specification, it has a moving mean without a useful interpretation, while its distribution depends on the number of countries and industries. This article proposes an alternative, additive RCA, running from –1 to +1, with a bell-shaped distribution that centres on a mean equal to zero, independent of the classifications used. Statistical tests show the additive index to be more stable empirically too. Furthermore, the article proposes an aggregate RCA that runs from 0, when pure intra-industry trade prevails, to 1 in the case of pure inter-industry trade. Comparable conclusions hold for the location quotient (LQ), which is used as a measure for the revealed locational attractiveness of certain regions or countries for certain types of industry.
Article
In this paper, we propose the normalized revealed comparative advantage (NRCA) index as an alternative measure of comparative advantage. The NRCA index is demonstrated capable of revealing the extent of comparative advantage that a country has in a commodity more precisely and consistently than other alternative RCA indices in the literature. As a result, the NRCA index is comparable across commodity, country, and time. Therefore, the NRCA index provides a useful tool for quantitative regional research, especially for studies on regional comparative advantage.
Article
Theoretical models of growth and trade suggest that patterns of international specialization are dynamic and evolve endogenously over time. Initial comparative advantages are either reinforced or gradually unwound with the passage of time. This paper puts forward an empirical framework for modeling international trade dynamics that uses techniques widely employed in the cross-country literature on income convergence. On applying this framework to industry-level data, evidence is found for significant differences in international trade dynamics among the G-5 economies. Copyright 2000 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Article
This paper compares the international trade pattern of Portugal with the other three EU15 Cohesion countries - Spain, Greece and Ireland - over the last forty years. The paper adopts a fact-finding approach, investigating the degree of openness of these economies and making extensive use of the standard Balassa (1965) index to assess the technological content of these countries' manufacturing trade. In order to infer on international trade specialization and on the persistence of trade patterns, the paper provides empirical evidence on the shape of the cross-sector distribution of 120 manufacturing exports and examines the intra-distribution dynamics. The Balassa index is also computed using import data, which allows for an assessment on the similitude of relative import structures and a crude identification of major vertical specialization activities. The paper concludes that there was a significant increase in the degree of openness of all economies, particularly in Ireland. Over the last four decades, Portugal shows a tendency to reduce its overall extent of export specialization, but significant differences with the world average still remain. The same behaviour is found in Greece and, more strongly, in Spain, which is the least specialized country. Conversely, Ireland shows the strongest export specialization and there is evidence of an increase in the last twenty years. The overall degree of specialization is higher on the export than on the import side, as the four countries analyzed show an import structure very close to the world average in the 2000-04 period. In the Portuguese case, we also find evidence that the degree of persistence of export patterns is higher than that of imports, in particular over longer horizons.
Improvements of system of export supp port in Russia
  • V P Shuysky
V.P. Shuysky, " Improvements of system of export supp port in Russia ", Russian foreign economic bulletin. Number 9, 2012. [in Russian]
Junior Researcher Sal'nikov
  • Andrei Gnidchenko
  • Andreevich
Gnidchenko, Andrei Andreevich, Junior Researcher Sal'nikov, Vladimir Alekseevich, Cand. Sci. (Econ.), Head of Laboratory
Export and Import Price Index Manual: Theory and Practice
  • Imf
Improvements of system of export support in Russia“, Russian foreign economic bulletin
  • V P Shuysky
  • VP Shuysky