Comments on Baltic Economy Watch: Estonia Retail Sales January 2008, and Sweden's Ba...

Hi LA,Nice to see you around here. Good point on w...

2008-03-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

Hi LA,

Nice to see you around here. Good point on wages. I am checking this out now, and will post something in my Latvian retail sales post on LEW.

"And I'm puzzled why Lithuania has not experienced the same crunch..."

Me too, Claus is really following this one. You may find this piece he did recently on Lithuania interesting.

Hope you are well.

Edward

And I'm puzzled why Lithuania has not experienced ...

2008-03-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

And I'm puzzled why Lithuania has not experienced the same crunch...

I think 2) used to be true - until the present cre...

2008-03-05T06:15:00.000-08:00

I think 2) used to be true - until the present credit crunch which was simultaneous. Construction boom took off 1-2 years later in Latvia (compared to Estonia) and so on.

Now, the events are mostly simultaneous. One exception is that Estonian exports are already declining year-on-year (loss of competitiveness?) while Latvian ones are still growing. Latvian salaries are 20-30% below Estonian which is around 1 year at the present salary increase rates - that could explain it.