German Exports to the Euro Area - A Cointegration Approach

This paper analyses the determinants of German exports to the euro area, which is by far the biggest market for German products. Four conditional error-correction models based on regionally disaggregated data are developed. One specification includes EMU industrial production and a real external value based on consumer prices, the other three use different EMU investment aggregates, the corresponding real external values and a proxy for European market integration to explain exports. The models perform equally well in a number of diagnostic tests. For short-term forecasts, however, the model using industrial production seems to be the best, since it outperforms the other models in terms of one-step ahead out-of-sample forecasts. Furthermore, the explanatory variables of this equation (industrial production and consumer prices) are easier to forecast than investment aggregates and the corresponding prices.