Resumen de Quality and prices of intra-european trade of food-industry products
Andrés José Picazo Tadeo, Ernest Reig Martínez
The completion of the European Single Market should bring out an exploitation of comparative advantages in production and trade. It is usually assumed that, given the predominance of intraeuropean trade flows in the global import figures of the European Union, efficiency gains from trade creation could be potentially important. However, the analysis of the effects of the Single Market on trade specialisation with a greater degree of accuracy requires trade quality indicators to be available. This paper uses the theory of index numbers to establish the relative quality levels of the food industry shipments to the European Internal Market from European Union member countries. It is found a positive relationship between the evolution of country shares on the European food in-dustry and the ability to achieve growing quality levels in the composition of export flows. Finally, intraeuropean food industry trade is analysed accordingly to the pattern of specialisation adopted.
