Suchergebnisse

The European Union protects over 1,000 Geographical Indications for distinctive regional foods such as Parma ham and Feta cheese. This paper tests whether external protection of Geographical Indications through trade agreements has increased exports of European Union Geographical Indications. The answer matters for trade policy, because the protection of at least some Geographical Indications has been a red line in recent trade negotiations. We use detailed export data for cheeses, covering the 2004–2019 period. The analysis uses the latest trade models that take into account the possibility of zero-trade flows for certain goods. We find that legal protection of Geographical Indications in trade agreements does not generally lead to significant additional exports above and beyond the general export-promoting effects of trade agreements. This finding should limit international fears of protected Geographical Indications widely displacing comparable products made outside of the European Union. However, although there is no significant effect across the board, more detailed analyses do find significant effects. In particular, Geographical Indications of higher quality and with higher market shares do benefit from stronger external legal protection. Based on these findings, the European Union may want to refocus its demands for protection of Geographical Indications during trade negotiations.

Melitz and Ottaviano's (2008) firm-heterogeneity model predicts that trade liberalization induces a selection process from low to high productivity firms, which translates to an industry productivity growth. A similar firms' selection effect is induced by market size. In this paper, these predictions are tested across 25 European countries and 9 food industries, over the 1995-2008 period. Using different dynamic panel estimators we find strong support for the model predictions, namely that an increase in import penetration is systematically positively related to productivity growth. The results are robust to measurement issues in productivity, controlling for market size, country and sector heterogeneities, and for the endogeneity of import competition. Interestingly, this positive relationship is almost exclusively driven by competition in final products coming from developed (especially EU-15) countries, suggesting that EU food imports are closer substitutes for domestic production than non-EU imports. These results have some potentially interesting policy implications.

AbstractThe World Trade Organization (WTO) protects geographical indication (GI) wines such as Bordeaux and Chianti. However, there is scant empirical evidence on the effectiveness of this protection. Our triple difference panel data analysis of EU wine exports from 1995 to 2019 finds a significant effect. When countries join the WTO, their import of GI wines increases by about 25% more than non‐GI wines, compared to non‐joiners. Our findings suggest that specific trade provisions matter and that the EU policy of also including wine GIs in bilateral agreements is an attempt to further improve enforcement of GI protection in third countries.

AbstractThis article exploits the sequences of the European Union (EU) enlargements to investigate their impact on the incoming countries' agricultural policy. We use a quasi‐experimental approach—the Synthetic Control method—to identify changes in the level of agricultural protection of the new members, in comparison with a counterfactual scenario. Our results suggest that earlier 1973 and 1985 EU enlargements show a significant increase in the rate of assistance to agriculture of incoming countries. The opposite holds, however, for the 1995 and 2004 enlargements, where the incomers significantly reduced their level of assistance to agriculture, in comparison with a counterfactual scenario.

We study the causal effect of trade liberalization on child mortality by exploiting 41 policy reform experiments in the 1960-2010 period. The Synthetic Control Method for comparative case studies allows to compare at the country level the trajectory of post-reform health outcomes of treated countries (those which experienced trade liberalization) with the trajectory of a combination of similar but untreated countries. In contrast with previous findings, we find that the effect of trade liberalization on health outcomes displays a huge heterogeneity, both in the direction and the magnitude of the estimated effect. Among the 41 investigated cases, 19 displayed a significant reduction in child mortality after trade liberalization. In 19 cases there was no significant effect, while in three cases we found a significant worsening in child mortality after trade liberalization. Trade reforms in democracies, in middle income countries and which reduced taxation in agriculture reduce child mortality more.

Considering the features of GIs and organic production, Deliverable 5.2 analyses the relationships between Public Goods (PGs) and Food Quality Schemes (FQS). The deliverable evaluates the impacts of the cases study described in Deliverable 5.1 in terms of their contribution to rural development and territorial cohesion given by the capacity to generate positive externalities and hence PGs. The analysis focuses on: i) contribution to local economies; ii) generation of environmental, social and cultural externalities; iii) contribution of different governance mechanisms to ensure the valorisation of producers' know-how and local resources; iv) social cohesion in term of creation of social capital and social networks. Overall, the products that fall within the organic FQS category, contribute to the generation of environmental PGs more than the GI FQS. However, the latter contribute more to the generation of socio-economic PGs. In general, most FQS present a low capacity to generate Cultural Heritage PGs. This indicates that there is considerable space to improve the cultural dimension of these products for the benefit of producers and consumers. The analysis conducted by the Strength2Food methodology show that if there is political will on the part of producers, there is room for improvement in the generation of PGs. At the same time, the measurement of the capacity to produce PGs would further justify the greater economic value of these products to consumers.

Considering the features of GIs and organic production, Deliverable 5.2 analyses the relationships between Public Goods (PGs) and Food Quality Schemes (FQS). The deliverable evaluates the impacts of the cases study described in Deliverable 5.1 in terms of their contribution to rural development and territorial cohesion given by the capacity to generate positive externalities and hence PGs. The analysis focuses on: i) contribution to local economies; ii) generation of environmental, social and cultural externalities; iii) contribution of different governance mechanisms to ensure the valorisation of producers' know-how and local resources; iv) social cohesion in term of creation of social capital and social networks. Overall, the products that fall within the organic FQS category, contribute to the generation of environmental PGs more than the GI FQS. However, the latter contribute more to the generation of socio-economic PGs. In general, most FQS present a low capacity to generate Cultural Heritage PGs. This indicates that there is considerable space to improve the cultural dimension of these products for the benefit of producers and consumers. The analysis conducted by the Strength2Food methodology show that if there is political will on the part of producers, there is room for improvement in the generation of PGs. At the same time, the measurement of the capacity to produce PGs would further justify the greater economic value of these products to consumers.

Considering the features of GIs and organic production, Deliverable 5.2 analyses the relationships between Public Goods (PGs) and Food Quality Schemes (FQS). The deliverable evaluates the impacts of the cases study described in Deliverable 5.1 in terms of their contribution to rural development and territorial cohesion given by the capacity to generate positive externalities and hence PGs. The analysis focuses on: i) contribution to local economies; ii) generation of environmental, social and cultural externalities; iii) contribution of different governance mechanisms to ensure the valorisation of producers' know-how and local resources; iv) social cohesion in term of creation of social capital and social networks. Overall, the products that fall within the organic FQS category, contribute to the generation of environmental PGs more than the GI FQS. However, the latter contribute more to the generation of socio-economic PGs. In general, most FQS present a low capacity to generate Cultural Heritage PGs. This indicates that there is considerable space to improve the cultural dimension of these products for the benefit of producers and consumers. The analysis conducted by the Strength2Food methodology show that if there is political will on the part of producers, there is room for improvement in the generation of PGs. At the same time, the measurement of the capacity to produce PGs would further justify the greater economic value of these products to consumers.