Suchergebnisse

An important element of the foreign trade research is an analysis of its commodity and geographical structure. A method of examining the similarity of foreign trade structure was proposed in this article and applied on the example of certain EU countries. The aim of this article is to assess the degree of similarity of foreign trade structures and to indicate the extent to which it reflects differences in economic development.
The study was conducted with the use of an original indicator of commodity structure similarity and a hierarchical cluster analysis for the period 2006—2015. It enabled to identify the most similar countries in terms of foreign trade structure. Data for the computations were obtained from the Eurostat.
The obtained results proved that countries with similar economic potential have a similar foreign trade structure.

At this point, the European Economic Community began to expand. Plans for a common currency began and an exchange rate mechanism was created for the current rates to fluctuate against each other. The first expansion was January 1, 1973 when Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined the EEC. This would be the first of many expansions. On June 7-10, 1979, EEC citizens were able to directly elect members of the EEC parliament for the first time. Originally, they were delegated by national parliaments. As a result, parliament's influence raised. In the 80s, the EEC expanded twice. On January 1, 1981, Greece joined and on January 1, 1986, Spain and Portugal entered into the Union. On February 17, 1986, the Single European Act was enacted, and it hoped to create a single market among EEC countries. It would also give more power to parliament and increased powers in environmental protection. The late 80s were also significant for the collapse of Communism in the Eastern European countries, and unification of Germany. ; https://uknowledge.uky.edu/world_europe_journey/1002/thumbnail.jpg

South-Eastern European (SEE) countries have recently engaged in a regional integration process, through the establishment of free trade agreements between themselves and with the European Union (EU). This study evaluates the impact of this process on trade and firm performance. Three complementary approaches are used. The first consists in evaluating the degree of trade integration of SEE countries and determining their trade potential with their main partners, i.e. themselves and the EU. The second approach tries to evaluate the evolution of tariffs and nontariffs barriers, faced by SEE countries and estimate their effects on manufactured trade. The third part investigates the impact of trade liberalization on performance of firms in SEE. In particular, we are interested in what extent foreign trade and foreign direct investment contributed to improvements in firm performance. Several interesting results emerge from this study. Concerning our first approach, we find three results. First,Western Balkan countries have reached their trade potential for almost all sectors while Eastern Balkan countries have outreached them. One can therefore expect an increase of trade flows between the Western Balkans and the EU. Second, it seems that preferential trade agreements between SEE countries will have a limited impact on their mutual trade since their trade potentials are already reached. Third, all SEE countries' trade is below its potential with the rest of the world. Concerning our second approach, we find that exports are increasing in all sectors during the period 1996-2000, while bilateral tariffs are decreasing. However, this liberalization process exhibits small effects on trade. On the other hand, we find that nontariff barriers are increasing during the period. Trade liberalization should not be treated as exogenous (Trefler, 1993). Domestic firms, competiting with Balkan exporters, may have increased their lobbying activity for greater protection. As a result, NTBs increase and hurt exports of Balkan countries. In that respect, we find large estimates of NTBs on exports of manufactured goods. Concerning our third approach, we do not find a general pattern of uniformly significant impact of extensive trade flows on individual firm's TFP growth. Specifically, only in Romania and Slovenia, higher propensity to export to advanced markets (EU-15, rest of OECD countries) has a larger impact on TFP growth than exporting to less advanced markets such as new EU members and countries of former Yugoslavia. The role of imports follows a similar path as exporting. Importing from the advanced countries is important for firms in Romania. At the same time, for firms in Romania and Macedonia importing from countries of former Yugoslavia provides a dominating learning effect. For other countries in our sample no learning effects from exporting to and importing from individual geographic regions could be found. Thus, one cannot imply that liberalization of bilateral trade within the region of SEE or with the other regions will have uniformly significant impact on individual firm's performance, but in some of the countries analysed trade liberalization might be an important engine of firms' productivity growth. Our results also indicate some selection process in FDI decisions by parent foreign companies. Foreign parent companies seem to select smaller firms in SEE as well as least productive, less capital and skill intensive firms. However, we find contrasting results on the impact on foreign ownership on TFP growth. Three countries (Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia) experience faster TFP growth in foreign owned firms. In Romania, in contrast we find faster TFP growth in domestic owned firms, while in Bulgaria no significant differences have been found. However, one can expect that after restructuring these firms would improve their TFP at a much faster rate than purely domestic owned firms.

We are all aware that agriculture is important to developing countries as a source of income, employment and export earnings. To a far greater extent than in the OECD countries, agriculture it central to the economic performance of developing countries and the livelihood of their inhabitants. Rural societies in developing countries are directly dependent on the agricultural sector and urban dwellers rely on agriculture to provide food security and sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, many developing countries heavily rely on the export earnings or are highly dependent on food imports. Given the fact that the poorest and most threatened communities and countries are typically the most highly dependent, the resolution of pressing global agricultural policy and trade issues is critical to sustainable development and poverty alleviation.

Much research has been devoted to the consequences of the completion of the European internal market in 1992. Existing estimates of the effects of market integration remain exploratory, however, and many important issues have yet to be adequately addressed. These are the issues concerning this book. Edited by L. Alan Winters and Anthony Venables, the volume examines such questions as the extent of gains to be expected from both 'internal' and 'external' economies of scale following integration, the implications of 1992 for the European Community's trade with its traditional EFTA partners, the potentially valuable new East European markets, and the rest of the world. There are also chapters considering the implications of the internal market for the design of appropriate technology and taxation policies, and a study of the role of Japanese foreign direct investment in European manufacturing