Selected Central European countries' foreign trade development

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the analysis of foreign trade development in selected Central European countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary). The analysis is concentrated on identification of general development trend in the period 1994–2008. The main idea is to analyse those factors which have influenced the basic charac-teristics of foreign trade value development. The linear regression is applied to analyse the sensitivity of individu-al countries’ export on selected macroeconomic indicators changes. The following findings result from the analy-sis. The value of foreign trade of the V4 countries has been growing steadily. The value of trade has been increas-ing in all analysed segments – i.e. the agrarian products, fuels and raw materials and the manufacturing products. The analysis of the effects of selected variables on the value of exports of V4 countries is confirmed by the high interdependence between the export and GDP value. The impact of inflation, exchange rate and unemployment in the final value of export is minor.