Price Competition in the enlarged EU 27 Export Market and the Role of Foreign Direct Investment

From a microeconomic perspective competition between firms has been duely discussed. Extending microeconomic concepts to a macroeconomic level and considering competition between countries becomes more complex. The complexity issues is tackled in this study by extending a methodology developed in Borbely (2006) to account for specialization in specific sectors as well as price groups that under certain assumptions can be seen as a quality indicator. This study observes 27 EU countries - excluding Croatia - and Turkey. This allows for a view on the competition structure in the context of the EU common market. In a second step of the analysis it is analyzed whether FDI inflows impact the price - quality - level of a sector or the probability to switch to a higher or a lower price level in said sector. Where in other publications including \cite{borbely06} for selected EU countries a positive impact of FDI inflows is found, this study finds for the EU as a whole or the EU 15 or EU 10+1 (including Turkey) sub-groups no significant impact of FDI inflows on the price level or the probability to switch to another price level.