Comparative advantages and competitiveness of Hungarian and Slovenian agro-food trade in the EU markets

The paper investigates comparative advantages and competitiveness of Hungarian and Slovenian agro- food trade in the EU markets. Applying a highly disaggregated trade dataset, we describe the pattern of agro- food trade in Hungary and Slovenia using the Balassa index. The extent of trade specialization exhibits a declining trend. Both countries have lost comparative advantage for a number of product groups over time. The indices of specialization have tended to converge. For particular product groups, the indices display greater variation. They are stable for product groups with comparative disadvantage, but product groups with weak to strong comparative advantage show significant variation. The price competition, quality competition and the one- way trade are also analyzed using extended [1] approach. In Hungarian matched two- way agro- food trade the prevalence is on successful price competition and on successful non- price or quality competition suggesting comparative advantages for Hungarian agro- food product s vis- àvis bilateral trading partners. In Slovenian matched two- way agro- food trade the prevalence is on the non- successful price competition and on the non- successful quality competition suggesting comparative trade disadvantages vis- à- vis bilateral trading partners .