The impact of the accession to the EU on trade flows of the Visegrad countries. Analysis based on the synthetic control method

Adam Pochmara and Jan Michałek ()
Additional contact information
Adam Pochmara: University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences

No 2023-21, Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw

Abstract: In this paper, we analyse the trade implications of accession to the European Union (EU) for four Visegrad (V4) countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). The estimation of the effects of integration with the EU was carried out as a comparative case study using the synthetic control method (SCM). The selection of control variables of “donor countries”, necessary to construct counterfactual trade flows of “synthetic” countries, is based on the gravity model. We analyse the impact of the accession to the EU for 307 country pairs, which covers about 85% of the trade flows of V4 countries. Using this SCM approach we find a positive impact of accession to the EU on the country's performance 15 years after accession. The trade growth resulting from the accession - in comparison to counterfactual aggregates - is large but differentiated. The exports of V4 countries doubled, except for Hungary, while imports increased by 51% on average. Consequently, the trade balances of V4 countries greatly improved compared to counterfactuals. The trade flows strongly increased among V-4 countries, in contrast with the “Hub and spoke” hypothesis. We checked the robustness of our empirical results by running a placebo test.

Keywords: EU enlargement; Visegrad countries; trade flows; economic integration; synthetic control method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F13 F14 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:war:wpaper:2023-21

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marcin Bąba ().