The Catching-Up Process of European Enlargement: Hungarian and Slovenian Agricultural, Food, and Forestry Trade

This paper analyzes trade balances and unit values in Hungarian and Slovenian bilateral agricultural, food, and forestry trade with Austria, Germany, and Italy, respectively, to distinguish types of one-way and two-way trade flows, categories of price competition, and categories of quality competition. Two-way trade flows prevail among trade types. In two-way bilateral trade, categories of price competition prevail over categories of nonprice competition, but vary across trading partners. In Hungarian trade, successful price and quality competition prevail, suggesting comparative advantages for Hungarian produce arising from available agricultural factor endowments and technological improvements in processing compared with bilateral EU trading partners. In Slovenian two-way trade, unsuccessful price and quality competition prevail, suggesting comparative trade disadvantages arising from agricultural and structural disadvantages compared with bilateral EU trading partners. Looking dynamically, we find no significant catch-up in successful competition, as for Hungary, both successful price and successful nonprice competition increased only for Austria, but deteriorated for Germany and Italy. For Slovenia, successful price and nonprice competition remain at a similar level as Austria, but decline compared with Germany and Italy. The probability of remaining one-way trade is greater than the probability of staying within the same competition category in two-way trade. There are differences across countries and over individual years, but the mobility indices indicate decline in trade flow mobility, and thus, more stable trade patterns over time.