Export Competitiveness of Central and Eastern Europe Since the Enlargement of the EU

We use constant market share (CMS) analysis to decompose changes in the export shares of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies in the period since the 5th enlargement of the European Union (EU) and measure changes in export competitiveness. We find that the CEE transition economies have generally increased their world export competitiveness, but gains in market share have been tempered by a poor match between both the commodity and regional export profiles of most of the CEE economies and the changes in the world import profile, and by generally slow adaptation of the region to changes in the latter on both the commodity and regional dimensions. Changes in export competitiveness in the region overall are instead driven largely by expansions of market share within the EU. Using a new method we show that only a small proportion of the change in the trade share is attributable to changes in the extensive margin. We discuss possible policy implications