MAIN WORLD EXPORTERS OF GOODS IN YEARS 1995-2011 – ANALYSIS BY VALUE ADDED
MAIN WORLD EXPORTERS OF GOODS IN YEARS 1995-2011 – ANALYSIS BY VALUE ADDED

Summary/Abstract: The specific social division of labour which is characteristic for the modern world economy where enterprises based in different countries specialize not only in the production of particular goods and services, but also in particular stages of such production is the factor of a new pattern of the production processes – a fragmentation on a global scale. As the result of this fragmentation, the final value of the goods and services produced by particular countries contains both domestic and foreign value added content, so it becomes necessary to revise the approach to determining the position of countries in world export. The article aims to analyse the structure of world export of goods by groups of products and by geographical regions based on the concept of measuring foreign trade by value added. The calculations use the OECD-WTO data from the TiVA database. Due to the availability of data, the analysis comprised the years 1995-2011.The study shows that in the researched years the world export of goods and services was concentrated in the so-called Triad, i.e. Europe, Asia, and North America. It can be noticed, however, that Europe’s and North America’s position has weakened against the increasing role of Asia. This is reflected both in the official statistics and, even more distinctly, in the analysis based on value added. According to official data, both in 1995 and in 2011 the top ten listed five European countries, three Asian countries and two North American countries. Yet, in 2011 the European countries generally ranked lower, while the Asian countries ranked higher than in 1995. The real situation (i.e. based on value added) was much worse for Europe. Whereas in 1995 the top ten of the world exporters included six European countries, in 2011 – five and their actual share in the world export of goods was lower than the share of four Asian countries listed in the top ten. On the whole, the European countries ranked lower than in 1995 and lower than based on official statistics.

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