The evolution of agri-food trade patterns in Central European countries

This article describes the evolving pattern of Central European countries' agri-food trade using recently developed empirical procedures based around the classic Balassa index. The extent of trade specialisation exhibits a mixed trend. The results suggest that the trade pattern has converged in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Slovenia, while it polarised in Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia over the period. For particular product groups, the indices display greater variation. They are stable for product groups with comparative disadvantage, but product groups with weak to strong comparative advantage show significant variation. In addition, in the Baltic countries many specialisation improvements occurred in those product groups for which world demand expanded at the fastest rates during the period analysed.