Regulatory Distance Index for Non-Tariff Measures: Preliminary Assessment for the EAEU

The growing demand from governing bodies of integration blocs for tools to assess the benefits and costs of integration has stimulated the development of monitoring and evaluation systems. Almost all integration groupings design their own assessment frameworks, yet no universally accepted indicator set or standard for measuring integration has emerged. A promising avenue is to evaluate regional economic integration through the state of non-tariff measures (NTMs). Building on advances in big data processing, the InterAgency Support Group (IASG) has proposed an index of “regulatory distance” that measures divergence in NTM regimes between member states. The index is based on the standardized count of NTM combinations by product that are applied identically by any pair of countries. It captures both the intensity and quality of NTM application, enabling international comparison and providing a tool for the operational management of integration. Its reproducibility and comparability depend on the standardization of data handling at all stages of NTM processing, as codified in the UN Secretary-General’s Data Strategy. In the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), however, this approach is not yet applied. Owing to the specific treatment of NTMs in the EAEU, available data are not directly comparable with UN and WTO databases, and require costly reformatting before use in regulatory distance calculations. As a result, the regulatory distance index for the EAEU remains underexplored. This article develops a methodology for calculating a matrix of regulatory distance indices for EAEU member states using international data and presents the first such calculation in Russian economic literature.

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