BRICS EXPANSION AND ITS ASSOCIATION WITH GLOBAL TRADE AND ENERGY TRENDS: A QUANTITATIVE PANEL ANALYSIS (2000–2024)

Abstract

The BRICS grouping which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has been broadening its geopolitical significance to include other majority countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Iran and Ethiopia in 2024. As this expansion is relatively new, this paper will be a descriptive and exploratory evaluation of long-term trends in trade and energy related to BRICS and BRICS+ economies between 2000 and 2024. The study compares the trends of the global trade shares, energy consumption, and energy trade flows by using panel data of World Bank, UN COMTRADE and international energy databases. The documentations are done using fixed-effects panel model and a Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) gravity framework that identify associations, as opposed to causal effects. The results show that the BRICS and BRICS+ economies have become more and more actively involved in world trade and energy markets as time goes on, which is associated with the growing magnitude of the economies and their strategic significance. Nevertheless, due to the data constraints and the limited post-expansion timeframe the findings can be viewed as the tendencies as opposed to the findings of structural change caused by BRICS+ membership. The research adds to the current debates on the changing status of emerging economies in the world trade and energy management and reminds of the necessity of future research again after the expansion data is revealed.