The Effectiveness of Foreign Trade: Approaches to Statistical Evaluation

Thepurpos eofthearticleistopr e sentther e sultsoftheauthor’sr e s earchonbe stcurrentpr ac tic e sinstudyingtheeffec tiv ene ssofthec ountry’sfo reigntr ade(on the example of the Republic of Belarus) and wording of proposals for improving approaches to its statistical assessment. The author analyzes the traditional methodology directions to evaluate the effectiveness of activities of the national economic authorities by the state. The article provides some modern approaches to assessing the efficiency of foreign trade at the state level. Current econometric methods for estimating the efficiency of foreign trade which are not quite popular with domestic authors but are extensively used by foreign researchers are examined in detail. Based on actual data, the author conducted the analysis of foreign trade efficiency for the EAEU member countries using gravity models of foreign trade with dummy variables and the stochastic frontier method. The results indicate a positive trend in increasing the efficiency of foreign trade activities of the Republic of Belarus and Russia for the period from 2011 to 2019 with the other EAEU, CIS member states, as well as with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. In the nal section of the article, are formulated the directions for improving national statistics of foreign trade based on international experience in terms of its segment, which reects the effectiveness of foreign economic activity.