We use constant market share (CMS) analysis to decompose changes in the export shares of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies in the period since the 5th enlargement of the European Union (EU) and measure changes in export competitiveness. We find that the CEE transition economies have generally increased their world export competitiveness, but gains in market share have been tempered by a poor match between both the commodity and regional export profiles of most of the CEE economies and the changes in the world import profile, and by generally slow adaptation of the region to changes in the latter on both the commodity and regional dimensions. Changes in export competitiveness in the region overall are instead driven largely by expansions of market share within the EU. Using a new method we show that only a small proportion of the change in the trade share is attributable to changes in the extensive margin. We discuss possible policy implications.

The balance of payments can act as a constraint on the output growth rate, since it puts a limit on the growth of demand. This paper focuses on verifying whether the Balance-of-Paymentsconstrained growth hypothesis is suitable for explaining the growth performance in several transition economies of the Central and Eastern Europe that joined the European Union in 2004. According to Thirlwall´s Law, we determine the balance of payments equilibrium growth rate of an economy by the ratio of the income elasticities of the demand for exports and imports and the growth of foreign demand. The obtained results are compared with the multi-sector version of Thirlwall´s Law as an alternative approach that considers the structure of the economy and how specific specialization affects the Balance-of-Paymentsconstrained growth. Our results show that almost all transition countries in the sample grew and a higher rate that the one consistent with the Balance-of-Payments equilibrium and that the multi-sector version of this approach makes a suitable prediction of the actual growth in these countries.

The paper deals with the problem of solving the nonresponse problem in a realized census. The purpose is to modify the method of poststratification using weights to compensate for nonresponse, which is known in sample surveys, for its application in censuses. The suggested approach offers more accurate estimates because of compensation for nonresponse and the possibility to formulate broader conclusions based on the census data. The approach is advised in all surveys in which the costs of realization the survey by the census, are practically the same as for sample survey and the list of all units of the population is available.

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