27/03/2012 - 28/03/2012 : Workshop on external competitiveness and export performance

The workshop will bring together experts from national authorities (more specifically members of LIME, a working group of the Economic Policy Committee that advises ECOFIN Ministers) as well as experts from the ECB, OECD and academia.

Date & location

27-28 March 2012 - Brussels, Belgium

Contact

For registration, please contact the functional mailbox for this event by Friday 24 March at the latest.

About the workshop

The Directorate General for Monetary and Economy Affairs (DGECFIN) of the European Commission is organizing a workshop on external competitiveness and export performance to be held in Brussels on March 27-28, 2012. The workshop will bring together experts from national authorities (more specifically members of LIME, a working group of the Economic Policy Committee that advises ECOFIN Ministers) as well as experts from the ECB, OECD and academia.

The workshop is organised in the context of the new surveillance framework, which the Commission is putting in place, to prevent and correct harmful macroeconomic imbalances. This is referred to as the Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure (MIP) and is part of the measures on economic governance recently adopted by the Commission and Council. The scope of the MIP is rather wide and, in addition to the monitoring of external imbalances, it will also monitor internal imbalances. The new legislation has already entered into force, and in view of this DGECFIN is intensifying work on analytical frameworks and tools that can be used to underpin surveillance and policy recommendations.

Against this background, the workshop aims at discussing methodologies and tools for surveillance of external competitiveness and export performance in Member States. The workshop will reinforce our understanding of the theory and empirics of competitiveness, so that we can draw practical normative conclusions relevant for policy makers: what levels and evolution of which indicators point to poor or to good competitiveness. Forward looking methods (anticipation of likely competitiveness and performance developments) will be of particular interest.

The two-day workshop will be kick-started by an opening session in which the Commission will present possible elements for an assessment framework of external competitiveness at Member State level. Four thematic sessions will follow with a focus on: factors costs and productivity; countries' position in the global value supply chain; the role of non-tradables; new competitiveness indicators and how firm level data and evidence is reshaping our knowledge about competitiveness. The second day will be the opportunity to review the experience of some Member States as to ensure that their weakness and strengths can be correctly assessed.