THE CLUSTERING MODELS IN THE TRANSPORT LINKS’ DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND LATIN AMERICA

Abstract

The clustering of Latin American countries with the aim of identifying the priority directions of the transport links’ organization is presented for ensuring the foreign trade relations with the Russian Federation. The choice of trade Russian partners in Latin America by cluster analysis, which uses the statistical R- environment is performed. Such clustering indicators as the population, the territory size and GDP in absolute terms and per capita are used. The optimal number of clusters, which is equal to 4 is determined at the first stage, at the second stage the countries’ clustering in Latin America is carried out, at last the statistical evaluation of the results is given. The most promising for the foreign trade relations development with Russia are the first cluster countries. This cluster is formed by the great number of countries and therefore, it could be named «typical» one. The potential of these countries in transportation service of trade flows is estimated on the basis of the Logistics Performance Index’ rating (LPI is published in 2016 by the World Bank). The results of the cluster analysis show that the research has good prospects of practical implementation in the future, because most countries are located on the Pacific coast and have a land border between themselves.

Keywords

• transport links
• foreign economic relations
• clustering
• latin america.