Suchergebnisse

This Compendium describes the contribution of CompNet to the improvement of the analytical framework and indicators of competitiveness. It does this by presenting a comprehensive database of novel competitiveness indicators. These are more than 80 novel indicators designed by CompNet members that capture macro, micro and cross-country dimensions, thus providing a comprehensive view of the competitive position of EU countries and their peers. A short description of each innovative indicator – consisting of the motivation for use, an intuitive explanation of the methodology and a list of advantages and drawbacks – helps the reader to better understand the use of the novel variables. On the analytical side, issues related to the definition of competitiveness are discussed and the empirical evidence on the link between competitiveness indicators and policy objective variables such as real GDP per capita and external trade performance is presented.

In this paper, we analyse export competition between individual EU Member States and China in third-country goods markets. We find that competitive pressure from China is strongest for small and peripheral EU members, especially for the Southern periphery, Ireland and Central, Eastern and South-eastern European EU members. While we find no hard evidence for "cut-throat" competition between China and EU countries, we see an increasing tendency of smaller EU exporters leaving markets that are increasingly served by China. We base our findings on traditional market share analysis, the exploration of intensive versus extensive margin export growth and on a Dynamic Trade Link Analysis. The latter, a newly developed tool, identifies different types of competitive pressure at the detailed product-destination market level. We use UN Comtrade data at the highest level of disaggregation (6-digit HS) for 75 world exporters and importers over the period 2000-2011.

What drives external performance of countries? This is a recurring question in academia and policy. The factors underlying export growth are receiving great attention, as countries struggle to grow out of the crisis by increasing exports and as protectionist discourses take foot again. Despite decades of debates, it is still unclear what the drivers of external performance are and, importantly, which ones policy makers can influence. We use Bayesian Model Averaging in a panel setting to investigate the drivers of export market shares of 25 EU countries, considering a wide range of traditional indicators along with novel ones developed within the CompNet Competitiveness Research Network. We find that export market share growth is linked to different factors in the old and in the new Member States, with one exception: for both groups, competitive pressures from China have strongly affected export performance since the early 2000s. In the case of old EU Member States, investment, quality of institutions and available liquidity to firms also appear to play a role. For the new EU Member States, labour and total factor productivity are particularly important, while inward FDI matters rather than domestic investment. Price competitiveness does not seem to play a very important role in either set of countries: relative export prices do show correlation with export performance for the new Member States, but only when they are adjusted for quality. Our results point to the importance of considering the "exporting stage" of a country when discussing export-enhancing policies.