Would a Russian WTO accession increase the country’s export?

Sammanfattning: Russia began its accession process to become a member of the GATT, which later turned into the WTO, in 1993, but has not yet become a member. This paper’s ambition is to investigate whether a membership in the WTO would have a positive effect on Russia’s export and if the country would gain from a membership. By using data from, mostly, UN-Comtrade and CEPII, and analyzing how trade flows from a set of countries, which are similar to Russia, to the European Union has changed after a WTO accession, the effect of a WTO membership is isolated and applied to Russia’s bilateral trade. The paper finds that a WTO membership has a positive effect on trade flows and that it increases the trade flows with 12% among its members. These results suggest that Russia’s export will grow bigger with a membership in the WTO, and subsequently that Russia’s bilateral trade would gain from a membership in the WTO.