How Similar Are International Economic Relations of EU Member States? Comparing Trade, Investment and Political Behavior

This paper proposes a novel methodology to assess the similarity in trade and investment patterns across EU Member States (EUMS) with respect to the average\r\nEU performance. Contrary to alternative approaches, the similarity indicator presented here accounts for the sparse nature of trade and investment data. This study\r\nalso investigates the linkages between similarity and measures of political effort exerted by EUMS to develop an idiosyncratic strategy for their trade and investment\r\nrelationship with partner countries.