Shifts in Lithuania’s agri-food industry export competitiveness: a comparative analysis versus high- and medium-high technology manufacturing industries

Given the rising importance of global value chain, this paper analyses long-run shifts in export competitiveness of Lithuania’s agri-food industry compared to high and medium-high-technology industries in the context of Lithuania’s export vertical specialization. The combination of two complementary parameters of competitiveness i.e. Balassa (1965) index of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and Total Effect (TE) index proposed by Nyssens and Poullet (cited in Amador and Cabral, 2008, p. 202) were used. The matrix of both indexes builds on the scheme of analytical tool “products mapping” suggested by Widoto (2009). Our analytical tool is applied for the empirical analysis of export flows of goods by three end-use categories within aggregate agri-food industry the same as four manufacturing industries classified by R&D intensities, i.e. high-, medium-high-, medium-low- and low-technology industries. The OECD’s STAN Bilateral Trade Database by Industry and End-use category at the same time was applied to empirical analysis. The findings based on detailed analysis indicated significant differences in export competitiveness and its gains or losses in a long-term period among different reporting Lithuania’s industries and different goods by end-use category.