export quality upgrading among the EU member states? An application on Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

This paper uses the model proposed by Khandelwal (2010) to estimate quality of exported manufactured products from a sample of the new EU member states to the EU15 market during the period 2005-2013, namely Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The results indicate that all three countries upgraded the quality of their exports to the EU15 market. A type of “catching up” process seems to be taking place as the country with lowest estimated export quality in 2005 displays the highest rate of quality upgrade while the country with highest export quality in 2005 displays the lowest rate of quality upgrade. It is also found that some of the exported products are considered to be of high enough quality by the EU15 consumers while some exported products do not. These are the ones with highest relative quality upgrade, suggesting adjustment to the demand for high quality in EU15.