East and West Germany: Differences in Foreign Trade

Abstract

The article considers special aspects of foreign trade of the East and West German federal states identified on the basis of German statistics: role in the total German foreign trade/export/import, orientation of the regional economies on foreign markets, labor productivity in the foreign trade and in the domestic economy, distribution of trade flows by countries and commodities, foreign trade indicators of eastern and western regions. There is a progress in overcoming the lag of the East from the West, within which the greatest success in smoothing the discrepancies is manifested in the foreign trade’s country structure, and less noticeable results have been achieved in the labor productivity and in the foreign trade’s commodity structure. The article is based on the statement made by the author at the Roundtable of the Center for German Studies of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russia’s branch of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation «The 30th anniversary of Berlin Wall’s fall: a look into the past, present and future of the united Germany».

Keywords

• foreign trade quote
• export quote
• import quote
• country structure
• commodity structure
• eastern federal states
• western federal states