An Evaluation of Regional Economic Integration of Caspian Sea Region

Regional Economic integration accrues considerable benefits to its members, as well as being considered a movement toward globalization. The main purpose of the present paper is to evaluate the efficiency and success of regional economic integration for Caspian Sea region Countries. For this, two major criteria, convergence or proximity of countries (Economic Convergence Index: ECI) and the trade-economic integration degree (Trade Intensity Index: TII)), have been measured and assessed for the Caspian region during time period 2000-2013. The results obtained from this paper indicate that per capita income gap is increased for some countries and decreased for others due to the economic integration. Also, an increase in the trans-regional trade share of the countries has decreased the region’s trade intensity. There is a similar situation for Iran. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis shows that lack of intra-regional trade development is due to the export-import (Trade) structure of the Caspian Sea region, and thus, the regional economic integration seems impossible at the moment, but the exploitation of the economic integration benefits is expected with enhancement in the trade-economic structure of the region countries.