EU ACCESSION AND TRADE INTEGRATION: THE GRAVITY MODEL OF TRADE IN THE CASE OF THE EU CANDIDATE COUNTRIES
In the majority of the EU potential members agricultural sector is playing a prominent role. Such an outcome is based on the high contribution of the agricultural sector on GDP, employment and trade accounts. EU initiated bilateral trade liberalization with the Western Balkans through the establishment of the ATPs. Furthermore, trade liberalization is extended in the regional level through the establishment of renewed CEFTA 2006. Despite the significant improvement, their export competitiveness remains weak. In the long run, agricultural exports might contribute on improvement of the export performance of the EU candidates. Main findings of the gravity model employed in this paper suggest that exports are positively affected by product size (GDP), and to lesser extent by the GDP of trading partners. Exports fall with the increase of the distance, and the fall in the value of exports is greater as larger is the distance between the trading partners. Therefore, the marginal fall in exports increases as far as the geographical distance between the trading partners increase. Initial assumptions that PTAs and cultural ties facilities the trade flows were affirmatively confirmed. Trade liberalization had a positive implication on improving export performance of the EU candidate countries.
Liberalization of Trade with Leading Trade Partners: Some Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina
In this study, the effect of trade liberalization with the leading trade partners on the B&H trade balance was researched. The theoretical framework includes a gravity model and econometric technique GMM dynamic panel. The research results have shown that export of products from B&H increased thanks to the growth of macroeconomic indicators of trading partners, dummy variables and the export of certain products according to the sector structure. On the other hand, imports of products in B&H decreased due to the decline of macroeconomic indicators of B&H, dummy variables and reduced imports of certain products according to the sector structure.
Competitiveness of the European Food Industry : an economic and legal assessment 2007
The competitiveness of the European food industry is weak compared to the US and Canada and at approximately the same level as the Australian and Brazilian industry. Scenarios show that unless the productivity growth in the EU is higher than in the rest of the world, EU competitiveness remains weak. Despite the weak competitive performance, a fair number of world leading food enterprises are located in the EU. Moreover the importance of the food industry in total manufacturing is growing, and the sub-sectors value added is higher than that of most other sub-sectors in manufacturing. The impact of food legislation does not seem to affect EU competitiveness negatively compared to the US. In general, EU companies’ view on the food legislation is positive. EU authorities can increase their support for the European industry by engaging in export negotiations. This study is one of the few or maybe even the first one, which included all subsectors of the food industry and benchmarked these with important non-EU countries.