Patterns of specialisation by country and sector in olive applications

Natural resource endowments can determine a country's specialisation and provide it with an advantaged position in international networks, but they can also lock it into low value-added activities in global value chains. Favourable weather and soil conditions have made olive trees one of the most recognisable characteristics of the Mediterranean landscape for thousands of years. Olive oil and foods using olive related products are traditionally associated with the Mediterranean lifestyle and healthy nutrition habits, but are Mediterranean countries using their natural advantage for upgrading in global value chains? Are there other uses of olives outside the agrofood sector offering new opportunities in other sectors for countries with olive hectares? The aim of this paper is to present an analysis of country specialisation patterns across different sectors using olive applications. We compare the number of planted hectares of olive crops across countries with their revealed comparative advantages in terms of olive products exports and with their revealed technological advantages in terms of olive related patent applications. Our analysis shows that there is great heterogeneity across olive producing countries. We observe that the top countries, Spain and Italy, have both commercial and technological advantages for all the olive uses considered (food, health, cosmetic and waste applications), but only find a statistical association between natural, commercial, and technological advantages across for agrofood uses. We also observe that, regardless of the existence or not of natural advantages, demand opportunities associated to healthier lifestyles are leading some countries to specialise in health, nutrition, and cosmetic uses of olives. Moreover, circular economy and climate change policies are also fostering new uses of by-products of waste applications from olive oil production.