New indicators of price competitiveness and effective exchange rates are proposed in order to provide more accurate information about the overall competitive position of a given country with respect to the traditional indices. The new methodology uses one of the so-called "superlative" index numbers that are characterized by very small approximation errors, which are of higher order than those present in the traditional indices. The empirical evidence in four Italian exporting sectors show that the proposed indicators may differ from the traditional ones more than three percentage points not only in the end of the examined period, but also during the intermediate years.