Assessing Competitiveness After Conflict

This paper assesses competitiveness in the case of the Central African Republic, a postconflict country. The paper presents several conventional techniques for assessing competitiveness, namely the real exchange rate and recent trade performance. Several other measures are considered, in particular transport costs and governance measures, which may be more effective in capturing the obstacles to competitiveness posed by the poor security environment and weak institutions common to many post-conflict situations. The real exchange measure and trade measures suggest some mild erosion of competitiveness in recent years, while the other measures indicate that the competitiveness challenges faced by the Central African Republic are much deeper.Trade;Transport;Governance;transport costs, exchange rate, exchange rates, transport cost, real exchange rates, real exchange rate, terms of trade, trade performance, external trade, trade deficit, home currency, export performance, balance of payments, real effective exchange rate, exchange rate policy, investor protection, international trade, foreign exchange, exchange rate movements, nominal exchange rate, effective exchange rate, effective exchange rates, movements in exchange rates, factor markets, open economy, fixed exchange rate, trade barriers, equilibrium exchange rate, trade data, market exchange rate, export earnings, domestic prices, trade reforms, world prices, exchange rate behavior, exchange rate misalignment, trade liberalization, domestic production, imported goods, exchange rate changes, commercial policy, tariff rates, external tariff, per capita income, competitive market, competitive position, quantitative restrictions, monetary union, export diversification, nontariff barriers, external shocks, trade costs, common market, trade protection, external protection