The Study of Sverdlovsk Oblast’s Economic Relations with the Regions of the Urals

Abstract

The constantly changing economic landscape brings to a fore the issues of the country’s demarcation system development. The discussion on the boundaries of macroregions, including the Urals macroregion, is high on the scientific agenda. One of the decision-making tools for this is an analysis of economic relations within a macroregion aimed at identifying the subjects of the Russian Federation with the most intensive business cooperation. The paper provides a theoretical definition of the concept of relations. It analyses economic relations of Sverdlovsk oblast with other subjects of the Russian Federation, specifies the regions with the largest share of interregional trade, and, based on the data from open sources, makes assumptions about enterprises involved in dealing. The author highlights that official statistics contains only 62 commodity groups, which distorts the real situation: there are much more types of industrial products, and the supply of agricultural and semifinished products (including those of the defence industry) is neglected. The main conclusion of the paper is that Sverdlovsk oblast has strong relations with other territories of both the Ural Federal District and the Ural economic district. Therefore, both these variants of the new demarcation system are possible to apply, but the Ural economic district is preferable.

Keywords

• REGION
• SVERDLOVSK OBLAST
• ECONOMIC RELATIONS
• INTERREGIONAL TRADE
• INDUSTRY