Factors affecting competition in olive oil exports: Panel data analysis of selected countries. Case study

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.