Avantajul comparativ al României în comerţul mondial şi european cu produse agroalimentare

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.