Export influencing factors in the Iberian, Baltic and Visegrád regions
CONTENTS, FOREWORD
Contents
Foreword (Andrea Éltető)
Exchange rate regimes, labour market trends and recovery from the crisis (Norbert Szijártó)
Trade and FDI policy promoting export - experiences of the three peripheral regions (Katalin Antalóczy - Andrea Éltető)
The era after the euro area crisis in Poland's export: back to the old normal? (Patryk Toporowski)
Impacts of the Aid for Trade Initiative on the Export Performance of the Visegrád, Baltic and Iberian countries (Beáta Udvari)
Foreign trade of goods and services of the peripheral regions - characteristics and tendencies after the crisis (Andrea Éltető)
The role of the automotive industry as an export-intensive sector in the EU peripheral regions (Gábor Túry)
Export of SMEs after the crisis in three European peripheral regions - stimulating factors and effects on firms (Andrea Éltető)
Factors influencing the export of Hungarian SMEs (Andrea Éltető - Beáta Udvari)
Foreword
This book is a summary of a research project supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office - NKFIH (no. K 115578). The research team had three participants from the Institute of World Economics, Centre of Economic and Regional Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: Andrea Éltető, Gábor Túry, Norbert Szijártó. Further three researchers work in other institutions: Katalin Antalóczy at the Budapest Business University of Applied Sciences, Beáta Udvari at the University of Szeged, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration and Patryk Toporowski at the Warsaw School of Economics. The research project - with the title: "Factors influencing export performance - a comparison of three European regions - concentrates on export flows.
The international recession after the crisis of 2008 increased the importance of exports assource of economic growth in the European Union member countries. For today, these countries have been mostly recovered from the negative effects of the crisis, but these effects were especially long-lasting in certain areas. Our research focused on the exports of three regions of the EU: the Iberian countries (Spain and Portugal), the four Visegrád countries (Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Poland) and the Baltic countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia). These regions are situated geographically on the Mediterranean and Eastern periphery of the European Union and almost all of them were severely hit by the international crisis. However, there are differences among them, regarding the effects of the crisis and the measures to alleviate them. In the Iberian region recession proved to be prolonged but the Baltic countries showed considerable GDP growth after 2011. The Visegrád countries are heterogeneous in this respect, some (like Poland) could grow to some extent in the past years and some stagnated or showed volatile trends (Hungary, Czech Republic). During the crisis, in most peripheral economies a credit crunch was developed, investments and consumption decreased and governments had to apply tough austerity measures.
The Iberian, Baltic and Visegrád countries had already different economic paths of integration before the crisis hit them. Spain and Portugal joined the EU in 1986 with closed economies, dismantling of tariffs, creation of free trade and free movements of capital took place gradually afterwards, already within the Union. The Visegrád and the Baltic states opened up their economies to free trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the nineties, a decade before the legal accession to the EU. As a consequence of the transformation of economic structure, lack of domestic capital and considerable domestic entrepreneurship, the economic development became FDI-led in the Visegrád countries ("dependent market economy" model of capitalism). Foreign multinationals included also other peripheral countries rapidly in their production chains and therefore in certain fields they are not peripheries any more. (Regarding manufacturing production and export for example, the centre of the EU shifted eastwards and a "German-Central European manufacturing core" was created.
Having perceived the effects of the crisis and the international trade collapse in 2009 Iberian exports were increasingly directed towards non-EU regions such as Africa or Asia and to some extent a similar trend could be observed also in the case of Visegrád and Baltic exports. This shift, in theory, could have been helped by the Aid for Trade (AfT) scheme of the EU development policy. Aid for Trade is an international initiative created by the WTO in 2005 and the EU prepared an own AfT strategy in 2007. The initiative aims to develop the supply side capacities of the developing countries (improvement of trade infrastructure, training, budget assistance to adjust to the liberalized trade environment) with the overall objective to help developing countries participate in international trade more effectively. As the EU has wide relationship with developing countries, it can gain additional trade too. Earlier research pointed out that this kind of additional trade growth mainly stems from the new EU member states, therefore we investigated the market potentials for the Baltic and Visegrád countries (as new EU Members) and the Iberian countries (as former colonizers) outside the EU.
Certainly, national government policies also have intended to promote exports in all three regions. We analysed the characteristics and effectiveness of these central policies, strategies, institutions. Export promotion policies usually target small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The internationalisation and exporting activity of these firms have increased in all three regions. We conducted a questionnaire survey among Hungarian SMEs to test the various promoting and hindering effects on their exports, detect the opinion of the firms on the benefits of exporting and the utilisation of government incentives. The survey was complemented with personal interviews at companies and most of these cases are presented in the studies.
SMEs also look for possibilities to connect to global production chains. In our research we analysed gross and value-added trade data and also provided an overview on the role of automotive sector that has a large role in integrating the peripheral countries in the global value chains (GVCs). Visegrád economies are the most integrated into these chains, mostly in the low value-added segments of production. The export activity of supplier companies is highly import-intensive, dependence on imported value-added is usually large. (In our research we do not analyse the import structure deeply, we concentrate on export flows). Trade data should be cautiously evaluated because direct gross trade statistics do not show the final destination of the products, which is in several cases outside the EU.
This book contains studies on the mentioned macroeconomic, microeconomic and economic policy factors that have affected the exports of these three regions. During the research we published articles and working papers, the book relies on these, but updated with latest trends and statistics. The structure of the book leads from the macroeconomic and policy view towards the microeconomic one, backed by statistical data and indices.
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