Export and Import Variability and Economic Determinates of Countries

The article is based on macroeconomic data series related to Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania.The article assesses to what extent there are significant differences between countries in relation to the level of concentration of exports and imports of agri-food products.In order to assess the degree of concentration, the entropy and its breakdown by factors of influence are calculated.In this respect, the entropy calculated on the basis the of exports and imports series is broken down into two components.This decomposition allows the evaluation of related variety and unrelated variety, which are two important indicators for assessing the development potential of a country in a short and long-time horizon.By using the Granger causality tests, it is assessed to what extent the variability of exports provides support for the development of agricultural production in a short or long period of time.Equally, applying the Granger test determines to what extent the increase in population incomes has a direct impact on related variety and unrelated variety for imports of agri-food goods.