Economic fragmentation in Russia: The influence of international trade and initial conditions

Post-Soviet Russia has experienced a considerable degree of regional economic fractionalization. While previous evidence has assigned a causal role to openness to international trade in accounting for this phenomenon, we show here that evidence of this nature is less clear-cut upon conditioning on a set of regional-level pre-transition initial conditions, and focusing on international-trade activity measured at the regional rather than the national level. The variables used to quantify initial conditions include measures of standards of living, ethno-linguistic fractionalization, and most importantly, transportation infrastructure. © Springer-Verlag 2005.