Determining Factors of Czech Foreign Trade: A Cross-Section Time Series Perspective

By quantifying the determining factors of Czech trade during 1993-2002, this paper enriches the empirical trade literature with evidence from an economy that has undergone intensive structural changes. Our findings lend significance to standard macroeconomic variables such as aggregate demand and the real exchange rate. Apart from these, however, liberalisation of tariffs, the evolution of unit prices of exports and imports, and economies of scale also played a significant role. An out-of-sample forecast for the trade balance was carried out for 2003-2004.Dynamic estimation, export and import dynamics, trade determinants.