Ranking the border regions of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The article considers the specifics of border regions since these territories require attention not only in the framework of regional but also foreign economic policy. Existing inter-regional inequality results in the fact that the border regions of the Russian Federation differ significantly in terms of both the level of economic development and the degree of impact on regional economies. The article presents the author's methodology for assessing the index of the border position of the regions of the Russian Federation and ranking the areas by their border position. The basis of the methodology is the works of Russian and foreign researchers on the regional economy, economic-statistical methods, geoinformation, and cartographic methods. The author has ranked the regions according to the obtained assessments. The analysis shows the need to form a conceptual approach to the study of border regions, considering them from the perspective of mutual conditionality of the border region of a given country, the shared state border, and the possibilities of cross-border interaction, based on the features of economic development of the border region of the neighboring state. The study results can be used to improve the general approaches to implementing regional policy concerning the border regions of the Russian Federation. The proposed methodology will increase the efficiency of econometric estimates for studying various relationships and factors describing the economies of border regions.