Wrażliwość krajów Unii Europejskiej na zmiany cen zewnętrznych
Sensitivity of the EU Countries for Changes in External Prices

Summary/Abstract: Changes in external (world) prices affect the competitive position of a country’s economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze differences in strength of the impact of changes in import prices on the prices of products manufactured in different countries of the European Union and, consequently, the competitive position of the exporters. The analysis concerns an initial, short-term price impulse and does not consider the real-side adjustments. This effect cannot be observed in empirical data, because domestic firms facing rising costs of production apply different strategies for their reduction.The question posed here is: How do prices of domestic products react to the rise in import prices in a situation where there are no adjustment mechanisms (full price-cost transmission)? The analysis is macro-economic in nature, and the adopted model describes a small open economy, which means that the change in prices in the country does not cause changes in prices on world markets. As a measure, the inputoutput price multiplier was used. Input-output price multipliers were calculated for 21 of the European Union countries, based on the symmetric input-output tables (SIOT) published by Eurostat for 2005.

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