Lucie COUFALOVÁ
Specialist, Faculty of Business and Administration, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
174064@mail.muni.cz
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to identify the main determinants of Scotland’s foreign trade and, above all, the EU’s role in the volume of the country’s exports, as its EU membership is one of the key arguments in the political discourse about independence. The article highlights the results of opinion polls in the country, as well as the relationship between economic integration and political disintegration. The methodological approach adopted is the gravity model of international trade. Given the large number of zero flows present in the data sample, the Tobit model proved to be a more suitable technique for the estimation. The Random effects model estimates are also provided in order to prove the robustness of the estimates. The results of the study allow for more substantiated conclusions about the main determinants of Scotland’s foreign trade, as well as they provide arguments for discussing the implications of Scottish independence.
Keywords: Scotland, independence, European Union, international trade, gravity model
JEL classification: F13, F47, F15, R15