02550nam a22004097u 4500 pwiiw4631 OSt 20260516120039.0 181019t2018 au ||||| |||| 00| ||eng d OSt eng D24 F14 F41 E64 jelc Ghodsi, Mahdi Austria’s Economic Competitiveness in a Neighbourhood Context: Is Austria’s Economy Locked-in to the CESEE Region? Wien : Wiener Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche (wiiw), 2018. 21 S., 11 Figures, 30cm. wiiw Policy Notes and Reports 26 Since the Eastern enlargement of the EU in 2004, Austria has lost global export market shares. At the same time exports to Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) have gained a significant portion of Austria’s total exports. Moreover, in recent years Austrian GDP growth has slowed down and unemployment increased. In this context our main research question is whether the opening to the East has had a structural lock-in effect for Austria’s economy. In a novel approach on the territorial lock-in effect we apply a multi-perspective view from a microeconomic (firm-level), mesoeconomic (industry-level) and macroeconomic (country-level) perspective. The major finding is that by and large Austria is not subject to a lock-in effect into CESEE markets. On the contrary, the results suggest a growing internationalisation of the Austrian export structure. Nevertheless, policy recommendations that aim at further improving Austria’s competitiveness include a productivity‑oriented wage policy, an industrial policy that aims at technological upgrading, support for European policy measures that speed up income convergence across the continent as well as additional measures to internationalise Austrian businesses with a focus on the booming emerging markets in India and Africa. competitiveness lock-in effect total factor productivity value added trade real exchange rate Eastern Europe Austria Austria CESEE International Trade, Competitiveness and FDI Hanzl-Weiss, Doris Holzner, Mario Pindyuk, Olga Stöllinger, Roman Heimberger, Philipp 26 WIIW0000092 wiiw Policy Notes and Reports https://wiiw.ac.at/p-4631.html P 8553 8553 0 0 0 0 BIB BIB 1 2018-10-19 pwiiw4631 0 /26 1000010004631 2018-10-19 00:00:00 2018-10-18 P