Analysis of the Stability of the Model for Forecasting Mutual Volumes Russia’s Trade with BRICS Partners

The paper is devoted to the construction of models for forecasting the volume of trade between Russia and the BRICS countries under sanctions. Trade between the BRICS countries is the economic foundation of their comprehensive interaction and prosperity, therefore the problem of high-quality forecasting of the volume of this trade under unprecedented Western sanctions against Russia seems to be a relevant task of econometric modeling. The aim of the study is to improve the accuracy of forecasts of Russia’s trade turnover with BRICS partners by ensuring the stability of the forecasting model in the context of sanctions pressure from Western countries and the pandemic. The econometric tool chosen is a system of simultaneous equations describing the foreign trade turnover of each country (other than Russia) using annual levels of macroeconomic factors: the GDP of the BRICS countries, Brent oil prices, the US dollar exchange rate and the pandemic indicator over the time period 2000–2022. In order to take into account structural changes in fast-growing economies such as India and China, two-phase models (switching models) were used to describe their behavioral equations in a system of simultaneous equations. As a test for the significance of structural changes, due to the small sample size after structural changes, the Chow forecast test was used. Taking into account significant structural changes (in the post-pandemic period) within the framework of switching models allowed us to increase the accuracy of the forecast of the volume of trade turnover of the Russian Federation by 2.5 times.