Are Central American export specialization patterns “sticky”?

In the national innovation systems of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), countries’ export performance is considered to be the measure of their international competitiveness. The national specificity of economic performance is shown by the “stickiness” of each country’s export pattern and indicates how much room for manoeuvre there is in each case for economic development policy initiatives. The authors introduce an analysis of the export specialization patterns of the Central American countries. They follow the methodology of innovative European research, taking into account econometric evidence of revealed symmetric comparative advantage for those countries’ exports to the OECD, the CAN database of ECLAC being used for this purpose. This global analysis shows that in these countries’ exports, agriculture- and maquila-based products with little value added have “sticky” characteristics.