摘要：During economic downturns, weak domestic demand developments seem to be an additionaldriver of exports, as fi rms increase their efforts to serve markets abroad to compensate thefall in domestic sales. This may constitute an additional mechanism adjustment for the euroarea countries where real exchange rate variations are limited by the common currencyitself and the present low infl ation environment. However, this substitution effect betweendomestic and foreign sales could be different across euro area members. This paperuses panel data techniques to assess the role of the export structure in explaining thesedifferences. Building a novel indicator for product concentration, the results suggest thatdomestic demand developments are more relevant to explain exports in countries with alower product concentration index (that is, more diversifi ed exports). This contributes toexplain why euro area countries under stress registered different economic performanceduring the most recent years.
