Purpose: This paper aimed to evaluate the competitive potential of the agricultural and food sector in the member states of the European Union and identify differences between them with reference to the position of such countries in international agricultural and food trade. Design/Methodology/Approach: The competitive potential was evaluated using a synthetic measure designed using TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution). The potential was confronted with the competitive position of the member states of the European Union in the international trade in agricultural and food products. To this end, among other indicators, the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index was used. The analysis was based on data from EUROSTAT and FADN (Farm Accountancy Data Network) for years 2007-2017. Findings: The results point to a strong diversification of the level of agricultural development among the member states of the European Union. Four groups of countries characterised by a similar level of the analysed phenomenon were identified. The highest value of the synthetic measure was characteristic of the Netherlands. It was more than 3 times higher than in the country least competitive in that respect (Slovenia). Countries with the highest agricultural competitive potential such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and France, also maintain a high competitive advantage in the international agricultural and food trade. Many countries, in particular those included in EU-12
Motivation: Fiscal integration constitutes an important adjustment mechanism to cope with asymmetric shocks within a monetary union which does not fulfil many criteria of an optimal currency area. As is currently the case in the euro area, national governments implement discretionary fiscal policy to try to cope with the adverse economic shocks themselves and to try to stabilise income which leads to high budget deficits and public indebtedness in many euro area countries. While conducting fiscal policy at supranational level and fiscal transfers within EMU would allow for sufficient cross-country risk sharing and contribute to macroeconomic stability of the whole euro area. Aim: The aim of the paper is to give economic rationale and explain the significance of fiscal union for the effective functioning of a common currency area, and especially its macroeconomic stability as well as to present various forms of fiscal integration and to assess the possibility of their introduction within the euro area taking into account the current degree of economic integration, principles of conducting macroeconomic policy and its outcomes, the actual situation in the field of public finances and political circumstances in EMU and its member countries. Results: The greatest potential for macroeconomic stability -both in terms of asymmetric shocks, as well as these affecting the entire euro area -ensures the establishment of a large federal Eurozone budget. However, in a situation of a lack of political will to move forward into a political union, the approach to ensure fiscal stabilisation should include: creating even a small euro area-wide budget and the common Ministry of Finance, introducing a European unemployment (re-)insurance scheme with further harmonization of labour markets, equipping the banking union with a fiscal backstop as well as making national fiscal policies more stabilising and avoiding to impose self-defeating fiscal adjustments on crisis countries.
The purpose of this paper is a comparative analysis of support provided to agriculture sector by the QUAD countries in 1986-2014. The authors examined the changes in levels and structures of this support and tried to assess it from the point of view of its impact on the QUAD economies and markets. In the analysis conducted there were used especially the OECD data and indexes measuring state support to agriculture including: Total Support Estimate, Producer Support Estimate, General Services Support Estimate and Consumer Support Estimate. In the last three decades in all the examined economies, there has been a reduction in agricultural support in relation to GDP, although no distinct change has occurred in terms of the amount of aid in absolute terms (in the US its value even increased almost twice). As regards the changes in structure of support, the most favorable tendencies took place in the European Union where the market price support (MPS), i.e. the most distorting aid to the functioning of the market mechanism, was significantly reduced. One can also positively assess the support structure in the United States where about half of the agricultural budget is earmarked to consumers. Canada has very good economic outcomes as regard the agriculture sector even though it allocates the least amount of financial resources to support agriculture in relation to GDP among all the QUAD economies. However, despite a large part of this support is in the form of general services (GSSE), the country is characterized by an unfavorable trend of increasing expenditure on price support. Throughout the period considered the most harmful support policy from the point of view of market competition was led by Japan though it has affected to a lesser extent the functioning of international agri-food markets due to the lower importance of Japanese agricultural production and exports in the world economy in comparison to the EU and the US.
Autorki są pracownikami Zakładu Gospodarki Światowej i Integracji Europejskiej Wydziału Ekonomicznego Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej w Lublinie. Artykuł wpłynął do redakcji w marcu 2009 r. 1 Niniejszy artykuł jest zaktualizowaną i rozwiniętą wersją referatu pt. Competition policy-process and forms of its internationalisation, wygłoszonego na Międzynarodowej Konferencji Naukowej
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