ABSTRACT
The chapter aims to identify commonalities and differences in merchandise foreign trade of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. It analyzes foreign trade from structural and institutional perspectives. The institutional aspect of foreign trade refers to the regulatory mechanism of foreign trade: tariffs, qualitative restrictions, export subsidies and other measures. The institutional-economic difference between central planning and market systems is reducible to a single notion: the institution of ownership. In such circumstances, Ukraine’s reliance on ferrous and non-ferrous metals as the principle export commodity makes its position worse than Russia’s: the share of ferrous and non-ferrous metals in merchandise exports in Russia is half what it is in Ukraine. As a result of the institutional legacy of central planning, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine were oriented towards trade within the USSR and to Council for Mutual Economic Assistance economies. A common feature of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine is an active use of export tariffs, especially in the early 1990s.
