The Changes in Location of Russian Industry in Early Transition 1987-1993

This paper describes the effects reforms have had on industry's dispersion in Russia. We show that the start of relocation activity is temporally closely associated with the beginning of reform, lacks a clear industrial pattern and does not correlate with the output loss of industries. We also show that relocating industries - with the exception of the power industry - have tended to concentrate rather than diversify. At the same time relative productivity changed more rapidly than localization and the correlation of contribution of output with relative productivity of a region in a particular industry has increased for all industries while large regions have increased their productivity faster than small ones.