Auer, R. (2014) “The increasing competiveness of the southern Eurozone“, VoxEU Organisation, 11 April.
Some view the improvements in current accounts for Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain as short-lived – the result of a temporary compression of import demand that is likely to be reversed as the recession eases. This column argues the contrary, based on the fact that their improving trade balances reflect better export performance. This development points toward a fundamental stabilisation of the competiveness of these economies.
Current-account (CA) rebalancing is a necessary step for the Southern EZ countries to overcome their debt and external balance of payments crises.1 Figure 1 documents the impressive speed and magnitude of the southern EZ’s CA rebalancing. The green solid line plots the evolution of the rolling 12-month CA balance of these four economies.2 The figure also documents the evolution of some of the subcomponents of the CA: the 12-month balance for the services trade (blue dash-dotted line), income trade (yellow dashed line), and goods trade (red dashed line).3
Relevant posts:
- Tse, Τ. and Esposito, Μ. (2014) “Investing in ‘pockets of excellence’ in periphery countries would help the EU address its lack of competitiveness”, LSE Blogs, 19 February.
- Kastelli I. and Caloghirou, Y. (forthcoming) “The impact of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship on the growth and competitiveness of European traditional sectors”. In H. Hirsch-Kreinsen , I. Schwinge (eds.), Knowledge-Intensive Entrepreneurship In Low-Tech Industries, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
- O’Neil , J. and Terzi, A. (2013) “Addressing competitiveness or financial fragmentation? – a false dilemma”, Bruegel, 22 November.