European Economy. Economic Papers. Germany's growth performance in the 1990's

Figure 3.6: Exports and Imports
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Exports West
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Nevertheless, even taking this factor into consideration, clearly East Germany has a severe
dearth of viable exports, even though they are catching up. With a few exceptions, East German
producers have not established themselves in international markets and often serve only a local
or regional market.
Furthermore, the statistical underestimation of East German exports also implies that imports
are higher than what the graph suggests. More importantly, the graph is misleading as is does
not show the large current account deficit discussed earlier. This is because the former GDR
appears to have almost balanced trade account vis-à-vis Germany’s trading partners. Not shown
is the huge trade deficit that East Germany has with West Germany.
As a consequence, one cannot talk of a German competitiveness problem. West Germany
evidently continues to run very large external surpluses, just as in the late 1980s. Instead, the
favourable competitive situation of the West hides the extremely uncompetitive situation of the
East. The trade results therefore mirror the development of West German and pan-German
competitiveness indicators discussed earlier. The high level of taxes associated with transfers to
the former GDR might have contributed to some fall in West German trade to other countries
(as opposed to “exports” to the East). However, external competitiveness is not the area most
negatively affected by the transfer costs. As described elsewhere, the cost of these transfers lies
rather in subdued domestic demand and slow growth, because much of the transfers are used for
East consumption rather than investment. In addition those funds that are invested are at least
not directly productive for West German companies.
Clearly, therefore, a solution to both the West and East economic problems have to be found in
reducing the East German balance of transactions to a manageable figure. To achieve this, the
long-run condition is that the East succeeds in building a strong export industry. This, however,
cannot happen overnight. In particular, it takes money and time to develop brands that can gain
a premium price in the international markets. In the short and medium run, however, the
development focus should be simply to produce more tradable goods and services, for instance,
to use its underdeveloped tourism potential. Even if these are only sold on the regional or
national markets, its import substitution effect should allow a reduction in transfers. By contrast,
in the present political set-up, growth in the West that is not matched by growth in the East will

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simply lead to higher transfers to the East, which on the one hand would act as an obstacle to
further improvements in the West, and on the other hand act as a sweet poison that holds back
the East.
Analysis of manufacturing trade
Germany’s future competitiveness also hinges on the question of whether the country is strong
in market segments with a high growth potential. This can be analysed by looking at the relative
specialisation profile of Germany. Due to the small share of East German manufacturing, the
following statements reflect only West German companies. A priori, one would assume that the
biggest potential for growth lies in the sectors producing high technology products and using
skilled labour. By contrast, due to its high wages, Germany is unlikely to be competitive in the
world market in low technology sectors and sectors using mainly unskilled labour as their input.
Figure 3.7 shows the relative technology content of Germany’s exports, compared to the
average content of EU exports, which is set to a value of 1. As one would expect, Germany has
a strong comparative disadvantage in the low-technology sectors vis-à-vis other European
countries. This disadvantage is, however, not balanced by a comparative advantage in the high
technology sector, where Germany perhaps surprisingly shows a slight and slowly growing
comparative disadvantage. Germany’s export strengths compared with other EU countries lies
rather in the intermediate technology sector, such as vehicles and parts, chemicals, machine
tools and appliances.
The trend of loosing in the high technology sector is certainly worrisome for a high wage
country such as Germany. Other countries, such as France and the Netherlands appear much
better positioned, while the UK and Italy appear increasingly to lose out on high tech products.
However, it must be kept in mind that the term intermediate technology only applies to the
product itself. It does not necessarily apply to the production process. For instance, car
production can involve extremely complex machinery and production processes. It is therefore
useful also to take a look at the predominant input factors. An analysis shows that Germany’s
exports are relatively capital intensive and use high skilled labour (Figure 3.8). By contrast,
goods that use low skill labour are underrepresented. Here too, France and the Netherlands
appear to have a superior profile insofar as their exports are concentrated in high skill labour,
while the UK and Italy show no comparative advantage in skilled labour products.
It is not possible to draw direct conclusions on the future competitiveness of German industry
from this simple snapshot. However, a priori one would assume that the best potential for
Germany to maintain a global market share would lie in the capital intensive high-skill high-
tech sectors, because only these sectors can afford the country’s high wage level. It is then a
potentially worrisome fact that Germany appears to be losing slightly its comparative advantage
in these areas compared to other European countries. The changes in Figures 3.7 and 3.8 maybe
small but could point to a potential long-run decline of the German trade position. This is
compounded by the fact that the analysis does not include the service sector, where Germany is
particularly weak. In addition, by normalising the figures on an EU average, the data neglect the
fact that Europe as a whole is losing high tech market share, notably to the United States.

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