Efficiency development of Czech foreign trade in high-technology products and high-value agricultural products

Abstract

High efficiency of foreign trade is achieved in export of the commodities that are not only price competitive. The high-technology manufactures usually have the highest value added. The same is true for high-value agricultural products. The article concentrates on the comparison of exports of the Czech economy and other selected transition economies of Central Europe with economies of the European Union members, the United States and Japan using the coefficient of transformation output and the relative specialisation ratio on high-technology intensive commodities and high-value agricultural products. We can conclude that the efficiency gap of Czech economy and of the selected economies of Central Europe increased in the first half of the nineties. The trends of the second half of the nineties are quite different. The gap in efficiency of foreign trade is slowly decreasing and the analysed transition economies overcame the weakest economies of the EU members.

Keywords

• international trade
• foreign trade
• competitiveness
• high-technology trade
• agricultural trade