European Export Performance

Countries no longer specialise in products or sectors, but in varieties of the same product (sold at different prices). To study the way in which the European Union copes with the emergence of new big world exporters in this context, we analyse the redistribution of world market shares at the level of product variety. We distinguish for each product three price ranges. We decompose the growth of exports into structural effects (geographic and sectoral) and into a pure performance effect. From 1994 to 2007 the EU25 withstood the competition of emerging countries better than the U.S. and Japan. European market share losses arise during the 1994-2000 period, and are mainly explained by poor export performance of old member states. More precisely, the EU gains market shares in the upper segment of the market, by cumulating good performance and favourable structure effects, contrary to the U.S. and Japan which withdraw extensively from this segment of the market. Finally, all developed countries lose market shares in high-technology products to developing countries, with the EU losing less than other countries.