COMPETITIVENESS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM AGRI-FOOD TRADE IN RELATION TO THE EU MARKET

Katarína Barathova and Artan Qineti

Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE), 2018, vol. 21, issue 2

Abstract: The United Kingdom as a member of the EU can enjoy full access to the Single European Market. In terms of agri-food trade, EU is UK's most important partner. However, in June 2016, the UK opted to leave EU. This decision will significantly influence the whole economy of the UK including agri-food trade. The objective of this paper is to examine development and comparative advantages of The UK's agri-food trade with respect to the EU-27 markets. The analysis is based on Balassa index and its stability over the period. The agri-food trade data were acquired from Eurostat Comext database and cover the period 2000-2016. The analysis showed that over the period, the UK was able to retain comparative advantages only in three categories – HS 03 Fish, HS 21 Miscellaneous edible preparations, HS 22 Beverages, spirits and vinegar. In the rest of agri-food commodities the declining trend can be observed and in 2016 the UK had comparative disadvantages in 21 agri-food commodities. Based on the results of regression focused on the stability of distribution of Balassa indices over time, we can conclude that the degree of specialization in the agri-food trade between the United Kingdom and the rest of the EU has been decreasing as the number of commodity groups with a comparative advantage has been declining. With respect to Brexit, the agrarian trade of the UK deserves special attention, because the potential increases in trade costs are expected to affect the UK proportionally more than the EU-27.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/281201/files/RAAE_2_2018_Baratova_Qineti.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:roaaec:281201

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.281201

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE) from Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().