An analysis of the comparative advantages and changes in market share of Hungarian wines on EU markets

Bozsik, Norbert

A frequently employed method to evaluate competitiveness in foreign trade is the use of indices. The evaluation of Hungarian wines’ competitiveness on foreign markets paints a rather mixed picture. Among bottled wines, a demonstrable comparative advantage can only be discerned for the white, bottled regional category, but never in the case of quality wines. The situation is similar in the case of barrelled wines. Exports are dominated by the barrelled, white, regional table wine category, whose demonstrable comparative advantage is unfortunate from the point of view of the sector as barrelled wines have low added-value, but represent a high proportion of total exports, which would be a far greater advantage in the case of the high added-value bottled wines. Compared with the base period, there has been a fall in export to the EU market in all categories, with the exception of quality, bottled, white wines. The reasons behind diminishing exports vary for each category and cannot be attributed to one particular factor. The investigations, based on an analysis of market share (CMS model), show positive competitiveness exclusively in the case of quality, bottled, white wines. In all other categories, we are faced with a lack of competitiveness.

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