Articles
Comparative advantages and EU accession: the case of the NMS vegetables sector
Article number
1132_9
Pages
65 – 72
Language
English
Abstract
EU accession has changed the agri-food trade of New Member States, including the vegetables sector.
Although comparative advantages have changed considerably during the previous ten years, most studies have focused on industrial products in the literature, with agri-food sectors usually neglected in empirical works.
Therefore, the aim of the paper is to analyse the changing structure of comparative advantage of NMS vegetables trade in light of the 10 years of EU membership.
Results suggest that EU accession has enhanced the value of trade relations with the EU, though NMS vegetables imports have increased faster than vegetables exports, but the trade balance still exceeds pre-accession levels.
Both exports and imports are highly concentrated by product group and trading partner.
Results show that revealed comparative advantages have weakened after accession in the sector in all countries analysed.
By using a non-parametric KaplanNDASHMeier product limit estimator to analyse the duration of revealed comparative advantage in NMS vegetables trade, it is clear that accession has radically changed the survival time of vegetables trade, in that revealed comparative advantage is shown not to be persistent over the period analysed.
On the whole, results confirm that revealed comparative advantages have weakened after accession and that the vast majority of products had a revealed comparative disadvantage after 2004. Reasons behind these changes are also identified in the paper.
Although comparative advantages have changed considerably during the previous ten years, most studies have focused on industrial products in the literature, with agri-food sectors usually neglected in empirical works.
Therefore, the aim of the paper is to analyse the changing structure of comparative advantage of NMS vegetables trade in light of the 10 years of EU membership.
Results suggest that EU accession has enhanced the value of trade relations with the EU, though NMS vegetables imports have increased faster than vegetables exports, but the trade balance still exceeds pre-accession levels.
Both exports and imports are highly concentrated by product group and trading partner.
Results show that revealed comparative advantages have weakened after accession in the sector in all countries analysed.
By using a non-parametric KaplanNDASHMeier product limit estimator to analyse the duration of revealed comparative advantage in NMS vegetables trade, it is clear that accession has radically changed the survival time of vegetables trade, in that revealed comparative advantage is shown not to be persistent over the period analysed.
On the whole, results confirm that revealed comparative advantages have weakened after accession and that the vast majority of products had a revealed comparative disadvantage after 2004. Reasons behind these changes are also identified in the paper.
Authors
A. Jámbor, I. Ehret-Berczi
Keywords
comparative advantage, vegetables, EU accession, NMS, agricultural, trade
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