The impact of the services trade partnership with Asian countries of APEC on the economic growth in Russia

Regional Statistics. 2023. No. 13(4). P. 696–713.

Ли Х., Zobov A. M., Черников С. Ю., Moseykin Y. N.

This paper explores the impact of Russia’sservices trade with 12 Asian countries o fAPEC member states for the period Q2,2002–Q4, 2021. The purpose of this study isto reveal whether Asian countries can replacethe roles of European countries even in theadvanced service industry for the economicgrowth of Russia. The authors found apositive and significant impact of exports onthe economic growth of Russia in ordinaryleast squares (OLS) and robust least squaresestimations and that of openness and importson it in a robust least squares estimation. Fromthe vector autoregressive (VAR) Grangercausality test, bidirectional causality betweenexports and the economic growth of Russia isrevealed, while a unidirectional causalitybetween openness (imports) and the economicgrowth of Russia is confirmed. However, theresults of impulse response functions arerather vague, as the impacts of openness,exports, and imports are moving fromnegative to positive depending on the timeperiod. The results in services trade, whereRussia’s dependency on European countries islarge, are helpful to induce future trade policydirections for the Russian government tostrengthen partnerships with Asian countriesin the short term. Further barrier reductionissues should be carefully considered by theRussian government with attention to thelong-term implications of this policy.

Ключевые слова: Russia, Asia-Pacific region, trade in services, development policy, growth strategies