Natural resource endowments can determine a country's specialisation and provide it with an advantaged position in international networks, but they can also lock it into low value-added activities in ...global value chains. Favourable weather and soil conditions have made olive trees one of the most recognisable characteristics of the Mediterranean landscape for thousands of years. Olive oil and foods using olive related products are traditionally associated with the Mediterranean lifestyle and healthy nutrition habits, but are Mediterranean countries using their natural advantage for upgrading in global value chains? Are there other uses of olives outside the agrofood sector offering new opportunities in other sectors for countries with olive hectares? The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of country specialisation patterns across different sectors using olive applications. We compare the number of planted hectares of olive crops across countries with their revealed comparative advantages in terms of olive products exports and with their revealed technological advantages in terms of olive related patent applications. Our analysis shows that there is great heterogeneity across olive producing countries. We observe that the top countries, Spain and Italy, have both commercial and technological advantages for all the olive uses considered (food, health, cosmetic and waste applications), but only find a statistical association between natural, commercial, and technological advantages across for agrofood uses. We also observe that, regardless of the existence or not of natural advantages, demand opportunities associated to healthier lifestyles are leading some countries to specialise in health, nutrition, and cosmetic uses of olives. Moreover, circular economy and climate change policies are also fostering new uses of by-products of waste applications from olive oil production.
•The Mediterranean culture has to keep up with technological investments in olives of countries with no natural advantages.•Specialisation patterns in exports and technology differ across olive producing countries.•The top two countries in hectares (Spain, Italy) have comparative advantages in trade and technology in all olive uses.•Commercial and technological advantages are only significantly associated for agrofood applications.•Olive use is expanding from agribusiness to health, nutrition, cosmetics and energy following new demand opportunities.•Circular economy, climate change and smart specialisation influence emerging uses of olives.
In order to provide wheat quality information for wheat purchasing & storage companies and processing companies in Hebei Province and provide technical basis for the rational use of local wheat ...resources,The newly harvested wheat from the main wheat producing areas in Hebei Province from 2010 to 2019 was tested for quality indicators such as test weight,mass of 1000 grains,unsound kernel content,sprouted kernel content,moisture content,hardness index,falling number,wet gluten content,and protein content.The quality of wheat in Hebei Province in the past ten years was analyzed from three aspects:the annual change of each detection index,the comparison of the average value of the detection index of each city,and the comparison of the selection of the detection index of each city.The results showed that the quality of wheat was normal except for 2013 and 2018.The quality of wheat in 2013 was the worst in ten years.The test weight,mass of 1000 grains and falling number of wheat were all at the lowest values.The unsound kernel content and sprouted kernel content and moisture content were at the highest values.In the data of past ten years,the wheat in Xinji City has obvious comparative advantages in terms of high test weight,high mass of 1000 grains weight,low unsound kernel content,and high wheat hardness index.In addition,wheat from Handan,Xingtai and Shijiazhuang City has obvious comparative advantages in terms of high test weight.
Strengthening competitiveness is an important factor in facing the growth of international trade in commodity markets, especially for maize as feed commodities.This research aims to: (1) analyze the ...level of profit and competitiveness of maize farming, (2) investigate farming components affecting competitiveness, and (3) analyze sensitivity level of profit and competitiveness towards the changes. Data were processed using PAM (Policy Analysis Matrix) and sensitivity analysis. The research was conducted on March- May 2018 in Pacitan with 102 maize farmers as sample respondents, collected proportionally. Sensitivity analysis observed four changes, i.e; increase of purchase price, the structure of labor, optimization of maize productivity, and weakening of rupiah exchange rate. Research findings indicated that (1) maize farming in Pacitan does not generate either financial or economic profits, as well as competitiveness, as shown by PCR and DRCR accounting for 1,033 and 1,024 respectively; (2) the component influencing competitive advantages is purchase price and component influencing comparative advantages is rupiah exchange rate; components simultaneously influencing both advantages are structure of labor and maize productivity; (3) the sensitivity analysis proves that the changes of profit are elastic towards the changes of four components indicated by elasticity indicator with a value of more than one. The changes of competitiveness are elastic only for purchase price, but for other components they are inelastic.
As important supplementary to major edible oils, comparative chemical advantages of minor edible oils decide their development and usage. In this study, chemical composition of 13 kinds of specific ...edible vegetable oils were investigated. The comparative advantages of chemical compositions of these edible oils were obtained as follows: (1) camellia, tiger nut and almond oil were rich in oleic acid, the contents of which accounted for 79.43%, 69.16% and 66.26%, respectively; (2) safflower oil contained the highest content of linoleic acid (76.69%), followed by grape seed (66.85%) and walnut oil (57.30%); (3) perilla seed, siritch, peony seed and herbaceous peony seed oil were rich in α-linolenic acid (59.61%, 43.74%, 40.83% and 30.84%, respectively); (4) the total phytosterol contents of these oils ranged from 91.46 mg/100 g (camellia oil) to 506.46 mg/100 g (siritch oil); and (5) The best source of tocopherols was sacha inchi oil (122.74 mg/100 g), followed by perilla seed oil (55.89 mg/100 g), peony seed oil (53.73 mg/100 g) and herbaceous peony seed oil (47.17 mg/100 g). The comparative advantages of these specific edible oils indicated that they possess the high potential nutritional values and health care functions.
•Fatty acid composition, sterols, and tocopherols of 13 specific edible oils were analyzed.•Chemical and nutritional advantages of 13 specific oils were discovered.•Sacha Inchi oil is a good source of tocopherols, especially δ-tocopherol.
This article assesses the possibility of improving the development of the external economic sector in Latin America as a whole and in Peru in particular, by analyzing the theory of international ...trade and current economic trends in the world. By using statistics from the foreign trade sector and considering global trends in the international trade over the past decade
Research background: Globalisation and economic integration are the reasons for which the competitiveness of economic entities is analysed more and more often in the context of their relations with ...the international market. One of the ways to assess the competitiveness of the Polish food sector is an analysis of comparative (relative) advantages in the export of this sector?s products.
Purpose of the article: The objective of this paper is to assess comparative advantages in Polish export of food products to the European Union against a background of selected groups of non-food products.
Methods: The study used the B. Balassa?s revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index. The study is preceded by a brief review of foreign trade results. The source of data was the WITS-Comtrade commercial database. The analysis was carried out at the level of the HS sections (in commodity terms). The research period covered the years 2003?2015.
Findings & Value added: In the years 2003?2015, export of food increased nearly six times and its import ? more than 4.5 times. The major partners of Poland as regards trade in food were the EU countries. The food sector was one of few sectors of the economy with the positive trade balance. Polish export to the EU was characterised by a diversified level of comparative advantages. From among 20 HS sections, in 2015 Poland had comparative advantages in export to the EU countries for products from 10 sections (2 food and 8 non-food). Those products accounted for 11% and 70% of Polish export to the EU, respectively. The development of Polish foreign trade in food products during the Polish membership in the EU as well as fairly high comparative advantages in the export of these products to the EU indicate the competitiveness and significant importance of the Polish food sector for the national economy.
Starting from the late 1950s, mainly as a reaction to Leontief’s paradoxical results, a large amount of research has underlined the great importance of technology and human capital in explaining ...international trade in manufactures. This study examines the patterns of comparative advantages for 42 countries and 91 manufactured classes of final and intermediate products and their changes between 2001 and 2019. The dynamics and the effects of the international fragmentation of production processes are also considered. Comparative advantages in each class of products are related to three different measures of a country’s human capital or technology endowment: the cost of labour, the level of formal education and the number of patents per capita. An indicator of home market size enters the model as a control variable. The econometric analysis reveals that in 2019, human capital or technology endowments explain comparative advantages in 70 out of 91 products. In particular, 31 products are positively and significantly associated with at least 1 of the 3 human capital or technology indicators, 34 products are negatively and significantly linked to at least 1 indicator, 5 products show contrasting results, 21 products are not related to any human capital or technology indicator. Between 2001 and 2019, comparative advantages for 15 classes of products shifted towards lower-technology countries and for 18 productions towards higher-technology countries. There were no shifts for 51 products. From a policy perspective, the distinction between high and low-technology productions could have some interesting implications. Since high-technology productions are characterised by a higher learning-by-doing rate, governments should foster domestic firms to upgrade the human capital or technology intensity of their productions.
A core principle in international economics is that the specialization of an economy on the basis of its comparative advantages leads to gains from trade. However, there is no empirical work directly ...linking comparative advantages and export specialization. This paper investigates whether the comparative advantages of countries have driven their export specialization. Panel unit root tests, panel cointegration tests, and panel causality tests are used to examine this relationship. We also use panel estimation methods that mitigate heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and endogeneity. The empirical analysis is based on annual Euro Area data for the period 1995–2016. Empirical results indicate that comparative advantages positively affect export specialization. Heterogeneous panel causality analysis results support that there is unidirectional panel causality running from comparative advantages to export specialization in most countries; and a reverse causal relation in Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Finally, we detect bidirectional causality in Ireland, Lithuania, Malta, and Slovakia.
This paper proposes an innovative approach to modelling trade specialisation of Slovakia and Czechia. These countries have a limited export structure concentrated mainly on machinery and transport ...equipment that require recent technologies and are subject to continuous automation. We aimed to identify factors that impact Slovakia's and Czechia's performance in the automobile industry on the EU-28 market using the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Approach. The Vollrath indicator of the revealed competitiveness (Vollrath 1987) demonstrates specialisation, representing a modification of the Balassa index of revealed comparative advantages (Balassa 1965). The paper shows compelling evidence of long-and-short-run asymmetry between trade specialisation and the real effective exchange rate in Slovakia. The results suggest that the Czech competitiveness in the automobile industry does not fall with a higher effective exchange rate. Other factors such as human capital and country size bolster the theoretical assumptions and show the over specialisation of both countries and chances to be less specialised with higher population growth. This paper's findings have a broader context and application for countries focusing primarily on manufacturing road vehicles.
Uzun yıllardır dış ticaret açığı probleminden kurtulamayan Türkiye’nin, dış ticarette özellikle komşularına karşı rekabet gücüne sahip olması son derece önemlidir. Komşularla ticaret nakliye ...avantajları nedeniyle dış ticarette karlılığı arttırırken ülkelerarası karşılıklı rekabet gücü ölçümü, bu ülkelerin hangi mal gruplarında uzmanlaşma gösterdiklerinin de belirlenmesi açısından ayrıca önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışmada dış ticaret ilişkileri çerçevesinde, Türkiye’nin Gürcistan pazarındaki rekabet gücünün genel analizi yapılmaktadır. Söz konusu çalışmada iki ülke arasında Covid-19 pandemisi öncesi ve sonrası ayrı ayrı incelenmiştir. Türkiye’nin Gürcistan’a göre karşılaştırmalı üstünlüğünü tespit etmek için 2019-2020 yılları ile sınırlandırılan çalışmada, Balassa (1977) tarafından geliştirilen ve rekabet gücü ile birlikte ülkelerin uzmanlaşma seviyesini de veren açıklanmış karşılaştırmalı üstünlük (AKÜ) endeksi hesaplanmıştır. Elde edilen sonuçlara göre Türkiye’nin, Covid-19 pandemisinin başlangıcı olan 2019 yılı ilk yarısında Gürcistan’a karşı rekabet gücünün düştüğü, pandemi etkilerinin ağırlaştığı ve kapanmaların yaşandığı daha sonraki aylarda ise tekrar yükseldiği tespit edilmiştir. Türkiye’nin araştırma döneminde Gürcistan’a göre daha çok mal grubunda rekabet gücü üstünlüğüne sahip olduğu görülmüştür.
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