This article reports on the latest update of Austria's effective exchange rate indices, which aggregate bilateral exchange rates and relative prices or costs into indicators of Austria's short- to medium-term international competitive position. The weighting scheme on which the indicators are based uses bilateral trade data for Austria's 55 most important trading partners. With the latest update, the three-year averaging period was moved forward to 2016-2018. The main results are as follows: Based on the recalculated country weights, we confirm the preliminary finding of a medium-term worsening of Austria's competitive position, although alternative price indices would appear to provide conflicting signals. In particular, measures based on producer prices and unit labour costs indicate competitiveness gains, while the HICP/CPI-based index shows marked losses. These diverging signals, however, merely reflect data availability at the current edge. With regard to the geographical focus of Austria's international trade relations, we observe a further shift toward overseas markets in the US dollar area and China, away from Western Europe and Russia. The real effective exchange rate for the tourism industry, which we developed during the previous update and enhanced during this update, reflects a more pronounced appreciation in the tourism sector than in the service sector as a whole. However, according to the latest figures on overnight stays this loss in price competitiveness has had no significant dampening effect on tourism demand in recent months. Finally, we address the economic costs of Austria's current inflation differential to the euro area, which has induced a real appreciation. In two simulations, we quantify realized effects and calculate expected future losses driven by higher unit labour costs. In total, we find that the loss in price competitiveness may cause the Austrian economy to shrink by around ¾ to 1 percentage point between 2022 and 2025.

Dieser Beitrag untersucht, ob das österreichische System der Lohnfindung, trotz enormer Veränderungen der ökonomischen Rahmenbedingungen in den letzten Jahrzehnten, noch einer Lohnkoordination durch den Leitabschluss des Metallersektors folgt. Anhand einer quantitativen ökonometrischen Untersuchung auf Basis detaillierter Tariflohndaten zeigt sich, dass der Prozess der Lohnfindung immer noch am besten durch die Lohnführerschaft des Metallersektors erklärt werden kann. Zudem hat sich die Lohnkoordinationsfunktion des Metallerabschlusses wohl durch eine zunehmende Konzentration von Kollektivvertragsabschlüssen, die im Jänner beginnen, verstärkt. Ein kürzerer zeitlicher Abstand zum Abschluss des Metallersektors könnte dafür sorgen, dass die Signalwirkung des Leitabschlusses steigt und die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung, die bei einem zeitlich größeren Abstand wichtiger wird, weniger Wirkung entfaltet.

This article reports on the most recent update of Austria's effective exchange rate indices, which serve to aggregate data on bilateral exchange rates and relative prices or costs into indicators of Austria's short- to medium-term international competitive position. As before, the weighting scheme builds on bilateral trade data for Austria's 56 most important trading partners and a three-year averaging period, which we were able to move forward to the period 2013-2015. Upon recalculation of existing observations from January 2013 onward, we find confirmation for the medium-term worsening of Austria's competitive position, but in a less pronounced form than suggested by the previous weighting scheme. On the tail end of the curve, the COVID-19 crisis in general and short-time work subsidies in particular have distorted several indicators in 2020 and 2021. With regard to the geographical focus of Austria's international trade relations, we observe a shift away from the large EU economies towards the USA and China, plus a weaker shift from Northeastern Europe towards Eastern Europe and Turkey. Given the economic relevance of tourism for Austria, we newly created a real effective exchange rate for the tourism industry. In this segment of the economy, we see a more pronounced appreciation than in the service sector as a whole from 2015 onward, which would normally imply a decline in tourism services output. That Austria's tourism industry clearly continued to thrive indicates that the appreciation coincided with an upward shift of prices and supply toward higher quality segments.