Do food scares explain supplier concentration? An analysis of EU agri-food imports

Article dans une revue: We investigate how rising sanitary risk of agri-food products affects the geographical concentration of European Union (EU) imports at the product level. We first estimate a product-specific measure of sanitary risk based on the count of food alerts at EU borders. Then we regress the evolution of geographical concentration indices on our measure of product risk and year. We find that product sanitary risk indeed affected the EU import pattern. Overall, the EU diversified its import sources, but with diversification at the extensive margin and concentration at the intensive margin. This pattern is stronger for risky products, leading to a two-tier system.

Auteur(s)

Mélise Jaud, Olivier Cadot, Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann

Revue
  • European Review of Agricultural Economics
Date de publication
  • 2013
Mots-clés JEL
F14 Q17 Q18
Mots-clés
  • Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed
  • European Union
  • Import concentration
  • Sanitary Risk Index
  • Food safety
  • Agricultural trade
Pages
  • 873-890
Version
  • 1
Volume
  • 40