Summary
The trade performances of France, Germany and Italy in the 1990s and 2000s have followed heterogeneous national patterns. Contrary to the Italian situation, French and German divergences cannot be explained by relative cost and price developments; geographical specialisation has a limited role in the differences between the three countries. Sectoral specialisation sheds some light to these divergences, emphasising the exposure of Italy to emerging country competition and the limited specialisation of France, while all three countries share a lack of specialisation in ICT products. Non-price competitiveness indicators, such as R&D or education levels, could also contribute to explain the German strength and Italian weakness.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of their respective central banks. The authors thank Olivier de Bandt, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Françoise Drumetz, Axel Jochem and Gilles Moëc for their useful comments, Sophie Garcia for computing the world demand series used in this paper, Claudia Borghese and Anne-Christèle Chavy-Martin for precious research assistance. All errors remain however the authors’.
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Felettigh, A., Lecat, R., Pluyaud, B., Tedeschi, R. (2006). Market Shares and Trade Specialisation of France, Germany and Italy. In: Convergence or Divergence in Europe?. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-32611-1_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-32611-1_13
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