The impact of the Central and Eastern European economies' trade integration with European markets on CEE trade structures has been studied extensively. These studies frequently observe a quality upgrading of CEE exports. In this paper we consider three dimensions of quality upgrading upgrading...

Casual evidence suggests that emerging and developing countries are often gaining market shares in world exports in technology-intensive sectors in the course of development. On the other hand textbook trade theory would suggest that these countries specialize in lower-tech industries. The...

Recent developments in economic integration show rather diverse patterns of integration into the world economy. Some countries are remaining in the low-tech industries whereas other countries succeed in becoming competitive also in high-tech industries. In this paper we postulate that...

The dark side of the Balkans (the shadow economy in Southeastern Europe) (by Edward Christie and Mario Holzner) Are CEECs trapped in low-quality export specialization? (by Uwe Dullek, Neil Foster, Robert Stehrer and Julia Wörz) Do interest rate differentials determine the movements in the...

Trade structure and convergence a comparison of CEECs to different world regions (by Julia Wörz) The weak dollar and its repercussions on Central and Eastern Europe (by Pawel Kowalewski) Conference Report 'WTO Round Basic Issues' (by Julia Wörz) Selected monthly data on the economic situation...

We develop a mixed complementarity programming (MCP) based estimating framework for non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to examine the evolution of market access conditions in the textile and clothing sectors, working with a panel of bilateral trade data on textile and clothing trade, underlying...

In an international comparison, CEECs show a relatively strong economic growth performance coming close to that of the first and second tier of Asian Tiger countries over the past decade, which emerge as the best growth performers (setting aside China). In recent years the CEECs' dynamic growth...

In 2005 most of the new EU member states (NMS) performed even better than in 2004. They have successfully managed the accession to the EU and gained the ability to grow fast despite the anaemic performance of the old EU. FDI inflows reached a record high. In the coming two years, economic...

This report investigates the impact of trade structure and trade specialization on long-run development patterns in a heterogeneous set of countries, including most OECD countries, developing and rapidly industrializing Asian and Latin American countries as well as ten Central and Eastern...

We describe concentration tendencies in individual manufacturing industries in Central and Eastern European countries and identify relevant factors causing these patterns. Using output and employment data for 14 manufacturing industries over the years 1993-2002, we observe an increase in...