The impact of Ukraine's accession to the WTO on this country's foreign trade

Objective assessment of the impact of Ukraine's accession to WTO on exports and imports is complicated by superposition of an additional powerful factor - the global economic crisis which makes distinguishing the impact of those factors using direct calculations impossible. The above mentioned fact has led to attempts to obtain unbiased estimates by methods of mathematical statistics separating the impact on exports and imports of each of these two factors. To analyze the changes in Ukrainian exports (imports) in 2009-2010, the author used regression dependencies built on database for 2000-2008 in which the volume of exports depends on output and hryvnia to US dollar exchange rate. The absence of a regression constant term reflects the absence of exports (imports) in the absence of economic activities. Using regression equations, the author calculated expected values of exports (imports) for each economic activity and determined confidence intervals for standard probability (0.95). If the actual value of exports (imports) exceeds the upper limit of the confidence interval and calculated Fisher F-statistic is greater than the critical value for default probability, it is an evidence of positive impact of Ukraine's accession to the WTO on country's exports (imports); negative if the value goes beyond the lower limit.