Import Penetration, Intermediate Inputs and Firms’ Productivity in the EU Food Industry

Alessandro Olper, Daniele Curzi and Valentina Raimondi ()

No 207844, 2015 Fourth Congress, June 11-12, 2015, Ancona, Italy from Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA)

Abstract: The aim of this contribution is to study empirically the effect of trade liberalization on productivity growth exploiting a large micro-dataset of more than 20,000 French and Italian food firms, over the 2004-2012 period. This relationship has been studied focusing on import penetration at both industry and upstream sectors level, to investigate the role played by imports in intermediate inputs. Main findings show that import penetration in both final products and intermediate inputs systematically contributed to firm-level productivity growth. Yet, the productivity growth effect induced by import penetration in upstream sectors is 10 times higher than the one at the industry level. Horizontal import competition coming from the EU15 and OECD countries exerts the strongest effect on productivity growth. By contrast, when vertical import penetration is considered, also sourcing intermediate inputs from emerging markets appears important for firms’ productivity growth. Finally, we also find a strong confirmation that the effects of import penetration are increasing with the initial level of firms’ productivity. All these stylized facts may have interesting policy implications.

Keywords: Agricultural; and; Food; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20
Date: 2015-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/207844/files/I ... 0Food%20Industry.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Import Penetration, Intermediate Inputs and Firms’ Productivity in the EU Food Industry (2015)
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:aiea15:207844

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.207844

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2015 Fourth Congress, June 11-12, 2015, Ancona, Italy from Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().