THE PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATIONAL CHOICE: THE MULTIFACTOR FUNCTION OF EXPORT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the methodology of modeling the influence of technical-economic, socio-economic and socio-political factors on the export of goods and services in the conditions of civilizational choice. These factors are considered on the example of foreign trade of Ukraine for the period from the time of restoration of its independence to the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. In the case of Ukraine, such factors include: age and technological structures of the main production assets; the structure of foreign ownership; monopolization of the labor market; electoral sympathies and age structure of the population; the magnitude of migration, unemployment and crime. Given the long period of colonial dependence of Ukraine, the factor of inertia of foreign economic relations is also taken into account. All these factors to one degree or another influenced the choice of foreign trade partners by Ukrainian firms. These factors are taken into account in the independent variables of the proposed export function. The function has a logarithmic-difference form: in its equation, all variables are dimensionless quantities - logarithms of the ratios of the differences of certain aggregate quantities and the corresponding factors. This form of the proposed function makes it linear and invariant with respect to the replacement of all relations with their inverses, as well as defined even for zero values of the factors. The export function is normalized: each relation that characterizes the firm is divided into a similar relation that characterizes the industry in which it operates. Variables reflecting social factors are differentiated by regions in which a certain firm operates. In a modified form, the proposed export function can serve as a tool for analyzing the evolution of foreign trade of other countries - both those that have existed for a long time and those that have only recently gained (or will gain) political independence. The logarithmic-difference form of the proposed export function can be used as a certain mathematical "template" for constructing other econometric functions that reflect the choice of economic entities between two opposite directions of their activity.