Antonio Rafael Peña Sánchez

FOOD EXPORTS COMPETITIVENESS IN E.U. BY COUNTRIES

The agri-food sector is characterized by being robust and strong, given its ability to resist economic crises in a better way. In the case of European Union, it is a leading sector in the world, for example, in terms of turnover. The main objective of this work is to analyse the competitiveness of the European Union agri-food exports by countries in 2004-2013, in the context of their total exports, by determining their different elasticities. This is an original approach in economic literature as it is not based on the traditional Shift-Share analysis. In this context, indicators such as the elasticities of regional and sectoral development has been estimated in order to indentify the strongest and the weakest countries about this question. The results of the research lead to the conclusion that European agri-food sector is a highly competitive activity in international trade. At a country level, important differences between Eastern and Western countries can be highlighted. Eastern countries would be more competitive in agri-food exports, mainly Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Western countries offer a quite different profile, as their agrifood indicators are acceptable but not as positive as theirs. This may be because they can have their competitive strengths in other more capital intensive sectors, located within the secondary and tertiary sectors. Spain, Portugal, France and Germany stand out but not with so strong indicators as Eastern countries. The most critical countries in these variables would be United Kingdom, Finland, Luxembourg and Denmark, whose indicators would be below average.