Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2009, 55(8):375-383 | DOI: 10.17221/42/2009-AGRICECON

The competitiveness and comparative advantage of the Slovak and the EU agri-food trade with Russia and Ukraine

A. Qineti1, M. Rajcaniova1, E. Matejkova2
1 Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak University of Agriculture, Nitra, Slovak Republic
2 Department of Statistics and Operation Research, Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak University of Agriculture, Nitra, Slovak Republic

The paper investigates comparative advantages and competitiveness of Slovak and the EU 27 agri-food trade in markets of two countries: Russia and Ukraine. Our aim is to see the dynamics of the agri-food trade for the analyzed countries especially in the post-accession period. Applying a trade dataset from the EUROSTAT and based on the approach applied by Bojnec and Fertő (2006), we describe the pattern of agri-food trade in Slovakia and the EU using the Balassa index. The extent of trade specialization exhibits a declining trend in the country. It has lost comparative advantage for a number of product groups over time. The indices of specialization have tended to converge. For the particular product groups, the indices display a greater variation. They are stable for the product groups with comparative disadvantage, but the product groups with strong comparative advantage show a significant variation. There are also shown different tendencies for different markets i.e. the trade patterns between the Slovak Republic and the EU 27 with Russia and Ukraine.

Keywords: comparative advantage, agri-food trade, EU 27, Slovak Republic, Russia, Ukraine

Published: August 31, 2009  Show citation

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Qineti A, Rajcaniova M, Matejkova E. The competitiveness and comparative advantage of the Slovak and the EU agri-food trade with Russia and Ukraine. Agric. Econ. - Czech. 2009;55(8):375-383. doi: 10.17221/42/2009-AGRICECON.
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