European Export Performance

Abstract

Using an econometric shift-share decomposition, we explain the redistribution of world market shares at the level of the product variety and by technological content. We decompose changes in market shares into structural effects (geographical and sectoral) and a pure performance effect. We regard the EU-27 as an integrated economy, excluding intra-EU trade. Revisiting the competitiveness issue in such a perspective sheds new light on the impact of emerging countries on the reshaping of world trade. Since 1995 the EU-27 withstood the competition from emerging countries better than the United States and Japan. The EU market shares for high-technology products, as well as in the upper price range of the market, proved comparatively resilient, though less so since the crisis.

Trends in the revealed comparative advantages of the EU member states

“…They also state that the international integration of the EU has increased and confirm it by arguing that the EU exports still embodied less domestic value added in 2011 compared to 1995 and consequently more foreign value. The sectoral specialisation and geographical orientation of the EU-27, Euro Area and exports of other selected countries was analysed by Cheptea et al (2012) [4] by using the Constant Market Share (CMS) decomposition and the econometric shiftshare approach. The results of their analysis showed an increase of the EU's share in the world market for top-range products, mainly in the sectoral structure of the EU exports, despite competitiveness losses.…”

The Export Performance of Countries within Global Value Chains (GVCs)

“…the majority of country-product combinations are zeros and only a minor percentage of potential trade flows can be observed. As noted by Cheptea, Fontagné and Zignago (2010), the number of potential flows should not be computed by simply taking the number of products times the number of exporters times the number of importers: only when at least one county exports one product to one partner, trade flows with all unreported destinations should be considered true zeros and therefore representing potential flows.…”

“…The approach adopted in this paper is an econometric version of traditional shift-share analysis based on a methodology developed by Cheptea, Gaulier and Zignago (2005) and further refined in Cheptea, Fontagné and Zignago (2010). Because the decomposition is carried out for each pair of subsequent years between 1995 and 2007, it can only explain the intensive margin of export growth (by definition, trade grows at the extensive margin only when a new flow appears or disappears between two consecutive periods of time).…”

“…In order to calculate the intensive and extensive margins of trade growth between 1995 and 2007, the methodology developed by Cheptea, Fontagné and Zignago (2010) is followed. To remove potential noise from the calculations, the following flows were excluded from the dataset: i) mineral products, specific and nonclassified products 2 ; ii) flows from and to non-independent territories and micro-states (but Chinese Taipei and Macau were included due to the high value of their trade); iii) flows below USD 10 000 which account for a large share of the total number of individual trade flows but for a very limited share of their value.…”

China’s competition and the export price strategies of developed countries

“…After the WTO accession in 2001, many studies focused on the possible consequences of the opening up ofand Klenow, 2005), Italy represents a case of interest, given its persistent specialization in so-called traditional sectors (Di Maio and Tamagni, 2008). This has resulted in a rising similarity between the export structures of Italy and major emerging economies, a factor that -despite recent research did not find evidence of "adverse export elasticity" compared to other main manufacturing exporters (Felettigh and Federico, 2010) -can account for market shares losses over the last years (Cheptea et al, 2010).…”