Price-quality competition in the exports of the Central and Eastern European Countries

Abstract

In the decade since the fall of the Berlin Wall the number of CEEC products able to compete in export markets has steadily increased. The quality level of these products still lags substantially behind that of EU products, however. The quality level of new CEEC products coming into the market is, in fact, lower than that of older surviving products, indicating that the CEEC countries are increasingly specialising in price-sensitive sectors. The following article uses the concept of unit value to analyse the changes in the price-quality competitiveness of CEEC exports.