Competitiveness of the Estonian timber products and comparison with Scandinavian and Baltic countries

The aim of the study is to find the Estonian timber sector competitiveness in the world timber markets. The different foreign trade related indices –Balassa index a.k.a. revealed comparative advantage index (RCA), relative import advantage (RMA), revealed competitiveness RC – were calculated for the assessment. The foreign trade data from UN COMTRADE database are used for the calculations. The ranks for different product groups were calculated for the year 2010. The best result for Estonia was in the prefabricated buildings product group, where Estonia ranked first in the world (RC = 3.50).