International competitiveness of the furniture manufacturing – lesson from the selected EU countries

Abstract

This study aims to compare and evaluate the international competitiveness of the furniture industry in the selected European Union (EU) countries using chosen result-oriented indicators. The results found that countries with the highest levels of international competitiveness of the furniture industry included Poland, Romania and Italy. In contrast, the comparative advantage of Germany, which is the largest furniture exporter in the EU, was not as significant. No comparative advantage in the furniture trade was observed in France and United Kingdom, which is confirmed by the negative values of the Relative Trade Advantage (RTA) index and by unfavorable values of the export specialization index. The results presented in the article expand the existing knowledge in the area of assessing the international competitiveness of the largest furniture exporters.