From Russia to Eurasia : Specific Features of the “Russosphere” from the Perspective of Business Activities of Japanese Firms

In this paper, we demonstrate the trends and prospects of Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) in European Emerging Markets (EEMs) against the background of the recent development of emerging markets and explore the specificities of the Russian market, the biggest EEM in terms of market size and inward FDI received. More specifically, we give an overview of foreign capital flows from Japan to major EEMs and describe the achievements and problems of Japanese investors as related to business with Russia. We find that the Russian market seems to be a lucrative option for Japanese firms, despite unfavorable investment conditions and limited institutional freedom afforded to outsiders, including a language barrier due to the wide usage of Russian in the business field. Although use of the Russian language is one of major business obstacles affecting foreign investors, making matters more challenging in the country, it nonetheless provides us with a common language as a hub of business operations in the former Soviet Union countries or “Russosphere,” where Russia has still economic leverage and maintains cultural domination

Russian Research Center, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University

2018-06

English(eng)

technical report

VoR

1883-1656

57

This research was financially supported by a Nihon University Research Subsidy (FY2014), the Kansai University Subsidy for Supporting Young Scholars (FY2015–16), the Joint Research Program of the Japan Arctic Research Network Center of Hokkaido University (FY2017), and a grant-in-aid for scientific research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology of Japan (No. 17H04553: FY2017–19)

RRC Working Paper Series

https://hdl.handle.net/10086/29444