Abstract:
The objective of this paper is the assessment of the revealed
comparative advantage for Romanian agro-food products on foreign
markets. Economical theory uses Balassa index in order to assess the
economic efficiency of foreign trade. This index measures the relative
performance of exports, per countries and branches, and it is calculate as
ratio between the share of a branch in the total export of the country and the
share of the branch in the world exports.
In this paper it is assessed the performance of foreign trade with agro
food products throughout the Balassa index, on European Union market and
on the world market. Therefore, databases containing Romanian exports to
European Union and to the world and European Union exports and world
exports will be used. The conclusions will set up a hierarchy of Romanian
sectors in terms of their competitiveness on the foreign markets. The results
of the research show that agro-food products export on foreign markets has
not comparative advantages for Romania, because the values of the Balassa
index are under the value of index 1. Still, for agricultural products the value
of this index is closed to the value of index 1.