چکیده:
In May 2004, ten countries joined the European Union. Most of these countries that are located in the central and eastern part of Europe have different historical background and economic structure, compared to the older EU members. One of the pertinent issues of EU Accession is the economic consequences for the countries neighboring the enlarged EU and the impact on trade of between these countries. The implication of regional economic cooperation and competition for all the EU members and countries located further to the East of EU, including countries in the Middle East and Central Asia in terms of resource allocation, the concentration of economic activities and its welfare implications, all depends upon how the new economic opportunities are exploited. The main purpose of this paper is to measure the degree and extent of comparative advantage in agricultural crop production and to compare the results for the enlarged European Union and countries located further toward the eastern frontier of the EU. The Bowen comparative advantage index as well as a simple regression model will be used in this regard. This paper will highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of the countries in this ‘bloc" in exploiting their agricultural trade potential.This paper, first, represents theoretical aspects of rational bubbles. Second, it shows one of the tests introduced to detect rational bubbles- integration/ cointegration based test. Finally, on the empirical side, it explores existence of both explosive and periodically collapsing bubbles in Tehran Stock Exchange. The results reject the existence of explosive bubbles but fail to reject the existence of periodically collapsing ones.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Increased production costs detract from the competitiveness of those supplying the domestic market vis-à-vis importers and put exporters at a disadvantage in other EU-country markets Accession to the EU implies the removal of barriers to agricultural and food trade as well as the adoption and application of EU codes regarding its commercial policies which may result in social and economic problems in acceded countries, bearing in mind the low productivity and hidden unemployment in many of the acceded countries.
In agriculture, as in other sectors, a gradual process of adaptation has been taking place for many years through Association Agreements (allowing freer trade between the OMS and NMS members), and pre-accession funding by the EU of rural development and agri-food industry restructuring programs in the acceded countries.
In order to evaluate the degree of exploitation of comparative advantage in trade of agricultural crops, the following regression was estimated for the OMS and NMS separately, by pooling commodity-country data in each group, comprising only those crops for which the Bowen RCA index has shown to be positive.
This is expected since the OMS is comprised of advanced European countries taking advantage of a free trading zone for a long time, whereas the recent accession of the NMS, with a less developed economic structure, to the EU, has just provided the opportunity for them to exploit their comparative advantage and enhance trade for the years to come."