Trade in agricultural and food products

Commerce des produits agricoles et alimentaires

Carl Gaigne and Christophe Gouel

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Abstract: This chapter reviews how the literature on trade in agricultural and food products has developed over the last 20 years. Its evolution has been heavily influenced by several developments in the international trade literature. The first relates to trade theories that connect closely with observables: new Ricardian models and firm-level analysis. The second relates to a shift toward applied work involving estimated gravity models and counterfactual simulations. Within a unifying framework, we provide a bird-eye overview of recent developments in trade literature that improves the predictive capability of empirical and theoretical studies for agricultural and food sectors. We highlight how land heterogeneity, technology, vertical relationships in the food chain, quality of food products, and taste affect agri-food trade and its welfare consequences. We also discuss the emergence of new policy issues such as climate change, quality standards, food security, market volatility, and nutrition transition, where although trade may not be at the center of the issues it mediates most of the effects. Last, this chapter identifies possible future developments to make agricultural trade a very active research field, with specific focus on the consumer preferences, hidden costs, production technologies, and market structures.

Keywords: Agriculture; Food industry; Heterogeneity; Comparative advantage; Quality; Trade; Volatility; Input-output relationships (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-06-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-int
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-03707237v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Elsevier. Handbook of Agricultural Economics, 6, , 2022, Handbook of Agricultural Economics, 978-0-323-98885-8. ⟨10.1016/bs.hesagr.2022.03.004⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03707237

DOI: 10.1016/bs.hesagr.2022.03.004

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