Comparative advantages of international trade: the bilateral opportunities Portugal – Latvia, Portugal – Poland and Portugal – Ukraine

Abstract

The paper aims to estimate which sector is under-exploited in terms of the trade between Portugal and three other European countries: Latvia, Poland and Ukraine. The Feitoria Model identifies underexploited sector/products for the selected markets in order to increase their exportations. The Feitoria Model is based on the comparative advantage concept of Ricardo with the incorporation of economic, political and competitiveness dimensions. The methodology presented in the study is configured comparing the potential trade indicators to effectively verified ones among the countries and uses a trade database of 2014–2018 period extracted from the United Nations Comtrade free database (UN Comtrade – International Trade Statistics Database).