IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/imfstp/v56y2009i4p919-957.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

International Competitiveness of the Mediterranean Quartet: A Heterogeneous-Product Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Herman Z Bennett
  • Ziga Zarnic

Abstract

The real effective exchange rate (REER) is the most commonly used measure for assessing international competitiveness. This paper develops a methodology to estimate the REER that incorporates two distinctive elements that are not considered in the current literature and applies it to the Mediterranean quartet (MQ) of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose common pattern of real appreciation has created concern in policy and academic circles. The two elements that this paper adds to the existing literature are (1) product heterogeneity when identifying each country's international competitors and their weights, and (2) a comprehensive treatment of services exports. Our refined measure suggests a modest reduction in the observed REER gap between the MQ countries and the other euro area countries. In particular, considering product heterogeneity and services exports implies a lower real appreciation from 1998 to 2006 on the order of 2 to 3 percent for all MQ countries. These are difference-in-difference estimates relative to the results obtained for the rest of the euro area countries using the same methodology.

Suggested Citation

  • Herman Z Bennett & Ziga Zarnic, 2009. "International Competitiveness of the Mediterranean Quartet: A Heterogeneous-Product Approach," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 56(4), pages 919-957, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:imfstp:v:56:y:2009:i:4:p:919-957
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/imfsp/journal/v56/n4/pdf/imfsp200914a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/imfsp/journal/v56/n4/full/imfsp200914a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nikhil Patel & Zhi Wang & Shang‐Jin Wei, 2019. "Global Value Chains and Effective Exchange Rates at the Country‐Sector Level," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 51(S1), pages 7-42, December.
    2. Holger Zemanek & Ansgar Belke & Gunther Schnabl, 2010. "Current account balances and structural adjustment in the euro area," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 83-127, May.
    3. Fernando Alexandre & Pedro Bação & João Cerejeira & Miguel Portela, 2009. "Aggregate and sector-specific exchange rate indexes for the Portuguese economy," Notas Económicas, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, issue 30, pages 6-28, December.
    4. Mayer, Thierry & Steingress, Walter, 2020. "Estimating the effect of exchange rate changes on total exports," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    5. Sato, Kiyotaka & Shimizu, Junko & Shrestha, Nagendra & Zhang, Shajuan, 2020. "New empirical assessment of export price competitiveness: Industry-specific real effective exchange rates in Asia," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    6. Holger Zemanek & Ansgar Belke & Gunther Schnabl, 2009. "Current Account Imbalances and Structural Adjustment in the Euro Area: How to Rebalance Competitiveness," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 895, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Jules Leichter & Cristina Mocci & Stefania Pozzuoli, "undated". "Measuring External Competitiveness:An Overview," Working Papers 2, Department of the Treasury, Ministry of the Economy and of Finance.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:imfstp:v:56:y:2009:i:4:p:919-957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.