I rest my case: competitividade e CUT (parte II)

Parte I.

"The CESEE countries have demonstrated tremendous gains in international competitiveness during their transition from centrally planned to market economies. Per capita income levels are substantially higher today than twenty years ago, marking impressive improvements in productivity levels. However, their catching- up process implied convergence in both income and price levels towards Western Europe. The convergence process was in fact accompanied by a real appreciation trend of CESEE currencies over the past two decades, which could suggest a loss in price competitiveness as a result of the catching-up progress.
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Very often, the analysis of price and cost measures therefore dominates the policy discussion. In particular, the real effective exchange rate is often used as a general proxy of competitiveness despite the fact that price measures ignore important non-price aspects of competitiveness such as quality improvements or shifts in consumer preferences. [Moi ici: Como não pensar logo na procissão de membros da tríade sempre a prever a nossa falta de competitividade porque não estamos preparados para competir no século XX] Further, price and cost measures may show divergent developments, making it difficult to identify even a single price indicator of competitiveness. Clearly, individual indicators illuminate different aspects of competitiveness, which should also be acknowledged.
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In this analysis, we try to incorporate important non-price features of a country's competitiveness, and namely the quality of exported goods as well as changes in the set of competitors, into a measure of price competitiveness. In other words, we correct a country's export price index for any bias, which might arise from non-price factors such as physical quality, variations in consumer tastes, and competitive pressure arising from newly entering competitors. While the proposed measure still neglects many important aspects of competitiveness, we hope that it gives a more unbiased picture of a country's ability to sell goods on a certain market.
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All indicators are signalling losses in price competitiveness between 1999 and 2010 for all CESEE10 countries.
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we observe a rather strong impact of changes in quality on export competitiveness.
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Although their export unit values were increasing faster than those of their main rivals, the quality of their exports was rising even faster. This, of course, includes tangible as well as intangible components of quality, as our methodology does not allow disentangling of the two. Most probably, the CESEE10 countries were able to improve both the physical quality of their output and its image, branding and market placement."

Da esquerda à direita, de Ferreira do Amaral ao bafiento Fórum para a Competitividade... todos embrulhados e metidos no bolso por este anónimo engenheiro da província.

Trechos retirados de "Evaluation of non-price competitiveness of exports from CESEE countries in the EU market"

CESEE - Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe"