Theoretical aspects of measuring quality competitiveness of country's exports

Quality is a complex phenomenon and there exist no general accepted definition, which fits every purpose and all the complexities in teal economics. While competitiveness of enterprises has been studied by many scholars around the world, competitiveness of nations is a relatively new discipline. Studies of export competitiveness in the world markets are not new. Several attempts to evaluate export competitiveness have been made in the past, primarily in Eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia, for example, a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the study was undertaken already in the 1960's. Similar approach was used by World Bank studies of the price and quality competitiveness of exports by other authors in the 1980's. Quality competitiveness topic is still important and research in this field continuous. Researchers are using different methods to look at the quality of exports and its competitiveness. Researchers are developing different approaches to measure quality competitiveness of exports. Authors in this paper will examine some theoretical aspects of measuring quality competitiveness of the country's exports by analizing literature and main indicator used in such studies -the unit value of exports. Unit value will be analyzed on example of Latvia.