COMMODITY EXPORT CONCENTRATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN THE EU MEMBER COUNTRIES

The main aim of the paper is to analyze the relationship between commodity export concentration and economic growth in the EU member countries in the period 1995-2009. The article consists of two parts. The first part includes the theoretical explanation of the relationship between the degree of export concentration (diversification) and economic growth, taking into account the main determinants of this relationship. The second part examines the relationship between the degree of export concentration and economic growth in the EU member countries using a vector autoregression model (VAR). The results include elasticity coefficients of GDP per capita against the changes in export concentration, estimated on the basis of impulse response functions. This is followed by decomposition of GDP per capita in order to estimate the impact of changes in the degree of exports concentration on the variability of GDP per capita.