Kurzbeschreibung von: Competitiveness and Trade Policy Problems in Agricultural Exports

Competitiveness has been considered merely a buzzword by some scholars because of the lack of consensus over its seemingly catch-all definition. However, policy makers and business people frequently use it to defend economic performance in international trade of countries, sectors, firms and/or products. For this reason, another group of scholars defends its use to capture the failures of the classical trade theory of comparative advantage. This paper supports the "defenders" by analytically applying the competitiveness theory to a specific case study: the competitiveness of banana exports from selected producing/exporting countries to the European Union. This research is also a contribution to the debate on the effects of trade policies in the agricultural sector, particularly in developing countries. It consists of four chapters divided into two analytical parts. The first part (the first and the second chapter) includes the theoretical fundamentals of the competitiveness theory and trade policies. In the second part (the third and the fourth chapter), the empirical study of the banana case is carried out by using the model of the cluster-value chain to analyze the determinants of competitiveness. A partial equilibrium model is used to specifically analyze trade policies' effects on the market share of producing/exporting countries. As a consequence of the theoretical and empirical analysis of competitiveness, the following hypothesis is supported: trade policies are only one of many determinants that should be taken into account in order to analyze the competitiveness of banana exports.