Declining german export prices due to increased competition from newly industrializing countries - evidence from germany and the ceecs

In this paper, the export demand and supply of German manufacturing industry is estimated for the period 1993 to 2005. The Johansen procedure (1991, 1994) is applied to estimate the long-run relationship in a VECM. Special attention is paid to the development of the German export prices being exposed to the competitive environment of fast growing countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since they offer similar high-technology products on the international export markets and are gaining the market share, German export prices are under downward pressure. The results show that German export prices grow at a slower pace than that of the competitors and that they are negatively influenced by the growing market share of the CEECs. On the export demand side, the empirical picture corresponds to the theoretical one displaying a less unity income elasticity of demand indicating the decreasing market share for German manufactures in the long run.