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Objective: This study aims to identify the contribution of each Brazilian state to the competitiveness of the country´s rice exports, through the indices of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and Relative Position (IPR), in addition to the construction of a performance matrix, according to the linear trend of the historical series of these indicators, following the model proposed by Farias and Farias (2018).   Theoretical framework: The importance of international trade is related to its ability to expand consumer markets for the population of a country, to the mitigation of internal risks through the diversification of internal markets, and to the possibility of obtaining new raw materials, technologies and new alternatives for production. Considering its relevance, commercial relations have been the object of study of economic sciences since its inception.   Methodology: Initially, the theoretical and methodological aspects necessary to obtain the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and the Relative Position (RPI) indices are detailed. Subsequently, the steps required for the construction of the performance matrix by Farias et al. (2018) for the rice sector are presented, as well as a description of the data used.   Results and conclusion: The empirical data cover the period from 1999 to 2021 and were collected in the Comex Stat database. It is noteworthy that only the first two are efficient and with a growing trend, indicating that these states have strong potential to expand their participation in the sector. The state of Acre was classified as with stable external potential, while Amazonas and Mato Grosso were classified as with stable internal potential. The other units of the federation were classified as inefficient.   Research implications: From the elaboration and analysis of this matrix, the present study contributes to deepen the discussions on the competitiveness of the Brazilian rice sector, and to elucidate the representativeness of each state for the international trade of this important commodity   Originality/value: Brazil has favorable geographic characteristics and climatic conditions to expand rice cultivation, and the sector has shown constant increases in productivity. For these reasons and considering that rice is one of the most important cereals in the world, the country could make better use of its productive potential to increase the international competitiveness of its rice sector.

The role of global value-added chains is growing in international trade. The development gap between highly developed economies and developing countries means that the only products with which less developed economies can compete on the international arena are agricultural products. Moreover, integration into global value-added chains is an important factor in achieving comparative advantages in trade and improving export competitiveness. The main aim of this article is to assess the impact of integration within global value chains on changes in the comparative advantage of developing countries in the global agricultural trade. The degree of participation of developing countries in global value chains (GVC) was assessed using data from the Trade in Value-added OECD–WTO database (November 2021 edition) by calculating domestic (DVA), foreign value-added (FVA), and revealed comparative advantage (RCA) indexes. The analysis covers the period 1995–2018 and 28 developing economies. The research showed that the foreign value added in the gross exports of agricultural commodities of developing countries was an important factor in strengthening their export position and the importance of integration within global value chains rises with increasing product complexity. In agricultural production, FVA in most developing countries does not have a significant impact on the shaping of the comparative advantage.

Cocoa has been present in Mexico since pre-Hispanic times. It was used in rituals, drinks, and even for trade. However, Mexico’s share in the world cocoa market is currently meager. This research aims to establish the current climate of Mexican cocoa production and marketing. The dependency ratio and the revealed comparative advantage index were calculated to determine whether the Mexican market has taken advantage of its climatological and geographical characteristics. The results show that the country is not competitive in the international cocoa market; its share in both harvested area and production volume is zero, and the Mexican market’s commercial demand for cocoa imports to satisfy domestic needs is high. The country’s consumption of this crop depends mainly on imports from Ecuador, which is a risk because any issue in the cocoa production system would directly affect the Mexican market. In conclusion, Mexico is not competitive in the international cocoa market. The country’s strategy should be to increase the harvested area and thus reduce its dependence on cocoa imports. El cacao ha estado presente en México desde la época prehispánica; se utilizaba en rituales, bebidas e incluso para el comercio. Sin embargo, en la actualidad, la contribución de México al mercado mundial del cacao es muy baja. Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo establecer el panorama actual de la producción y comercialización del cacao mexicano. Específicamente, se calculó el índice de dependencia y el índice de ventaja comparativa revelada para mostrar si el mercado mexicano ha aprovechado las ventajas comparativas de sus características climatológicas y geográficas. Los resultados muestran que el país no es competitivo en el mercado internacional del cacao; su participación tanto en área cosechada como en volumen de producción es nula. Además, la demanda comercial del mercado mexicano de importaciones de cacao para satisfacer sus necesidades internas es alta. El consumo de este cultivo en el país depende principalmente de las importaciones desde Ecuador, lo cual es un riesgo porque cualquier impacto en el sistema de producción de cacao en ese país repercutiría directamente en el mercado mexicano. En conclusión, México no es competitivo en el mercado internacional del cacao a pesar de ser el origen del cultivo. La estrategia del país debería ser aumentar la superficie cosechada y así reducir su dependencia de las importaciones de cacao.

This study is an attempt to examine similarities and differences in the patterns of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) of India and China in the global market at different levels of classification. The study analyses whether RCAs of these economies have undergone any structural shift/change or whether the pattern of specialization in these economies is competitive or complementary in the world market. The study reveals that India holds a comparative advantage in 9 out of 16 product groups of Harmonized System (HS) classification, 41 out of 97 HS chapters at HS 2‐digit level, and 2377 out of 4163 traded commodities at HS 6‐digit level, while China holds a comparative advantage in 6 out of 16 HS product groups, 45 out of 97 HS chapters at HS 2‐digit level, and 2075 out of 4381 traded commodities at HS 6‐digit level in 2018. Major findings suggest that both the countries have been performing well and broadly maintained their comparative advantage, especially since 2000. A comparative analysis of India and China reveals a small structural change in RCA over time in both economies at disaggregated levels. The study highlights that India and China neither have a competitive nor a complementary relationship in the global market. These findings reflect a scope of independent expansion of the economies of both India and China, without hurting mutual interest in the global market. It may be inferred from the results that mutual cooperation will enhance the competitiveness of both economies and contributes to global economic progress.

The practice of using Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) Indices to determine the flow of goods trade among countries is well established. But an important issue that demands attention is whether the RCA indices reflect the essentials of comparative advantage theory. Deb and Basu Foreign Trade Rev 46(3):3–28, (2011) examined the consistency of alternative RCA indices with the Heckscher-Ohlin theory of comparative advantage, leaving scope for re-examination of the indices in the context of the Ricardian comparative advantage theory, which insists on relative factor productivity differences among countries contrary to Heckscher-Ohlin’s relative factor endowment differences. The other issue which has been overlooked in much of the existing literature is the importance of value-added trade. With the growing importance of global production chains, RCA indices based on gross export values may not portray an accurate picture of the underlying comparative advantage of countries. In this context, adjusting the RCA indices to incorporate domestic value-added in exports seems to be quite relevant. This paper explores the consistency of RCA indices based on domestic value-added in exports with the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage using a panel data approach. A brief review on the structures of alternative RCA indices is also provided. The Log-of-Balassa index is found to be the best performer in this empirical examination, although the deficiencies of the index for cross-country or cross-commodity comparison must be acknowledged. The index of Yu et al. Ann Reg Sci 43(1):267–282, (2009) does possess the latter feature but in our study its performance is quite poor and hence its consistency with the Ricardian theory of comparative advantage is questionable.

The Italian agri-food sector has traditionally been one of the strongest in the national socio-economic system. In the last ten years, commercial exchange trends have shown growing openness towards foreign countries and in particular to European Union (EU) countries. Both the primary sector and food industry are strongly influenced by their territorial location so much so that several authors have highlighted territorial specialisation and its effects on that territory’s features also considering the contribution of the Italian Regions. The following work will analyse the patterns of agri-food specialisation in the Italian Regions. In particular, the Lafay Index will be used to evaluate competitive advantage at a Regional level.

The development of exports in an open economic environment is the best solution in accelerating the pace of economic growth. The research evaluates the competitiveness of Iraqi dates exports based on a set of quantitative indicators and shows the role of Trade activities represented by international marketing that ensures the flow of goods and services from production until they reach the consumer. The research found a competitive advantage for Iraq in its exports of dates, as the Revealed Comparative Advantage - RCA showed a remarkable rise during the years of study and reached 26.98 in 2008, as for the Concentration Index (H), which represents the concentration of exports in a product or a limited number of products. More than 0.5 came in all the years of the study and it reached 0.91 in 2010. That means, the concentration of Iraqi agricultural exports with a large percentage in dates exports, which means placing agricultural exports and the agricultural trade balance in a difficult position if crop production is exposed to shocks that affect the quality and quantity of production, such as epidemic pests, bad weather or price disturbances in global markets. The research recommended using the comparative advantage that distinguishes Iraq in the production of dates and working to increase the market share by finding new marketing channels.

Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indices aid in identification of the sectors in which countries reveal comparative advantage or disadvantage. Apart from serving such a dichotomous measure, the RCA indices are frequently employed as cardinal or ordinal measures over time. Application of the indices for comparative analyses calls attention towards the distributions of RCA indices, which must reasonably be stable over time, sectors and countries. Stability of index distributions facilitates the usage of indices as cardinal or ordinal measures over time. The present paper therefore analyses the empirical distributions of RCA indices to determine their suitability. However, such an analysis would be incomplete if the implications for RCA indices due to growing significance of global supply chains are not recognized. Hence apart from analyzing the distributions of gross trade based RCA indices, the distributions of domestic value-added in export based indices are also examined, and the differences are noted. Similar extensive analyses on the distributions of RCA indices are lacking in the literature. In this sense, the present paper makes an important contribution to the existing literature on RCA indices.

Recently, the growing interest in healthy and organic nutrition has led to an increase in both the consumption and production of olive oil. The fact that olive and olive oil production is mostly concentrated in the countries with a coastline on the Mediterranean has rendered their olive oil exports important in meeting the increasing demand for olive oil. For the exporting countries, this has raised the issues of having a large share in the international olive oil market and increasing their competitiveness. The importance of increasing competitiveness, especially for countries that generate income from agricultural production, is the driving force for conducting this study. The aim of the study was to determine the factors affecting the comparative advantages of the leading olive oil-exporting countries. In this context, the olive oil production, consumption and unit export prices of Turkey, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Tunisia for the 2000–2019 period were tested with a panel data analysis method to ascertain whether these variables have any significant effect on the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index. According to the findings, olive oil production affects the RCA index positively, whereas olive oil consumption affects it negatively in a statistically significant way.

Las actividades económicas a nivel estatal, que operan con diferentes insumos y tecnología, registran niveles de consumo de agua heterogéneos. El documento busca, primero, identificar los factores que determinan el consumo del recurso hídrico de manera productiva y, segundo, el efecto de este consumo en la actividad económica. El análisis considera 18 actividades económicas en México durante 2018. Se encuentra, mediante estimaciones de corte transversal, que la demanda de insumos –principalmente el personal ocupado–, incrementa el consumo de agua, al tiempo que éste, en términos absolutos, contribuye a la actividad económica en todos los sectores.