A Relative Unit Labor Cost: Case of Accession Countries

Abstract

In this paper, framework of the relative labor cost has been used in order to analyze relative competitiveness of the economic agents in the Croatia and five accession countries. Therefore, unit labor costs have been calculated for the Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. All of the analyzed countries are transition countries, on the similar level of GDP per capita, and are or will be in the near future EU members. Therefore, it is more than obvious that all of the analyzed countries will be direct competitors in the common European markets. Our findings suggest that relative unit costs (competitiveness) of Croatia vis a vis analyzed countries increased since 1996.competitiveness, relative unit labor costs, productivity, wages, employment