Measuring quality and non-cost competitiveness at a country-product level

Francesco Di Comite

No 467, European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 from Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission

Abstract: This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on macroeconomic imbalances and external competitiveness by developing a set of indicators of export capability at a country-product level which can be used to complement the existing toolkit of instruments based mostly on unit labour costs and relative price levels. A micro-founded methodology is here proposed to extract information on the capacity of a country's exporters to compete abroad by combining trade and macroeconomic data. In particular, light is shed on two independent components of demand for a particular variety (country-product combination): markups-shifting "quality" and sales-boosting "non-cost competitiveness". Together with cost efficiency and information on foreign prices and consumption, these additional indicators may foster our understanding of the determinants of a country's external position, thus providing better guidance for policymaking.

JEL-codes: F12 F41 L11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2012-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/publications/ ... r/2012/ecp467_en.htm (application/pdf)

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:euf:ecopap:0467

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 from Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECFIN INFO ().