Trends of revealed comparative advantages
It is apparent that for the early years of the study period the two indices were missing
for many products (see Table A3). This could be explained by the fact that Laos‟ export
commodities were actually very limited to some agricultural products; wood and wood products; and clothing, because prior to the transition initiative trade in Laos was less
liberalized and the export sector was much smaller (see also Table 1). Similar to the case of
trade shares, some further plausible reasons for large changes in the indices of RCA between
1985 and 1990 include (i) the lack of data for Vietnam and for some COMECON member
countries during this period and (ii) the lack of information on information on border trade
with Thailand, Vietnam and China.