Modern Integrated Associations: Comparative Analysis of Economic Growth Factors

1The article presents the results of a research aimed at the explanation and evaluation of the factors of economic growth of regional integrated associations and the national economies of their member countries. The authors determine that these factors are foreign trade, mutual balance of trade and domestic demand. The novelty of the methodology used by the authors is that, unlike the traditional method where the assessment of the growth factors of integrative associations and their member states is based on the comparison of two components: external and domestic demand, this method breaks external demand into two components: first part is net exports (the difference between export and import, which is the component of aggregate demand) of goods within the integrative association, i.e., net exports of mutual trade; the second is net exports of foreign trade beyond the integrative association. The target of the research included seven most famous regional integrative associations that emerged at different times and are currently undergoing different stages in their development: the European Union, the North American Free Trade Area, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the South American Common Market, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, as well as members of Eurasian integration — the Customs Union and the Common Economic Space, which on January 1, 2015 transformed into the Eurasian Economic Union. The authors come to the conclusion that integration develops successfully only in the context of the growth of the national economies of the member countries. The economies undergoing a crisis have to invest more efforts into dealing with domestic problems than in solving the issues related to integration.