Prague Economic Papers 2000, 9(4) | DOI: 10.18267/j.pep.88

Czech foreign trade in the nineties: adaptation to developed markets

Vladimír Tomšík, Eva Zamrazilová

The article deals with the problems of adaptation of Czech foreign trade to challenging markets of developed countries. It devotes special attention to the trade with the EU since the problems of adaptation, leading to growing trade deficits, were most profound in this territory. In the end of the nineties, the adaptation to developed markets proceeded rapidly, competitiveness of Czech exports quickly growing. Main Czech trading partners are treated separately in the third part of the article. Final part shows that reorientation of Czech foreign trade resulted in the creation of the new risky factors of Czech external balance. Regression analysis of foreign trade showed high dependence of Czech exports on West European, especially German, business cycle. High import intensity of Czech exports might thus cause the problems of external imbalance again, even under good export performance.

Keywords: European Union, foreign trade, import elasticity, export elasticity, monetary approach, Keynesian (income) approach

Published: January 1, 2000  Show citation