Cybergeo (Oct 2007)
La Russie et l’Europe : une intégration économique encore à venir ?
Abstract
This paper aims at analysing the process of regionalisation, i.e. the formation of large geographical ensembles or macroregions. Inside these macroregions, the international trade tends to increase faster than at the global level. What are the most relevant indicators to determinate their geographical limits? In order to answer this question, the paper proposes the analysis of the commercial relations between European Union and Russia until 2004. Is Russia involved in the regionalisation process? Does it progressively enter the economic region dominated by the European Union? The first part of the paper shows that the supposed process of regionalisation must be qualified, as far as the relation between Russia and EU are concerned. Russia is getting more and more important in the external trade of EU, but the contrary is not true. The second part is based on the analysis of another indicator: the coefficient of bilateral trade. It was invented and perfected by economists of the CEPII (Gaulier, 1998). It allows to measure trade proximity between partners by comparing observed trade flows between them to their theoretical volume. In other terms, it shows the real intensity of trade between countries by eliminating the bias related to size effects (economic weight). The evolution of this coefficient between Russia and all its European partners (Western Europe, CEE countries, CIS members) is systematically analysed since 1994 until 2004. The last part of the paper is focused on the explanations of the geographical distribution of the coefficient and of its evolution since 1994. It is then based on a model which proposes three explanatory variables: kilometric distance between partners, the location in the European political and economic space (does the partner belong to Western Europe, to Central and Eastern Europe or to the former USSR) and the number of political frontiers between partners. The second variable shows the highest degree of correlation with the coefficient of bilateral trade. That means that the economic space inherited from the cold war period has not totally disappeared yet. The limits between former USSR, former popular democracies and former Western Europe do not inhibit trade relations between Russia and its non CIS partners, but they still keep them under their theoretical level.
Keywords
