Measuring the Intensity of Competition in the Greek Imported Meat Market

Greece is self-sufficient in crop production but it relies heavily on meat and dairy imports. The Greek balance of trade for agricultural products has steadily declined due to the heavy imports of meat and dairy products. The estimation of elasticities of import and export demand functions has always been used in international economics to determine the causes of trade deficits and to explain the past as well as, to forecast the future. Despite the published research on the analysis of import meat demand for several counties, there is just one work concerning the analysis of Greek import meat demand. However, the results of this work are not differentiated by supply source. In order to alleviate this shortcoming, this paper analyzes the Greek meat import demand differentiated by source. The model explains more than 86% of data variation. The empirical results indicate that due to inelastic demand, German beef exporters could gain market share in the Greek market through competitive prices. The expenditure elasticities for beef imported from France and Germany reflects the strong long-running preferences of Greek market from these countries in terms of beef. Also, expenditure elasticities reveal that pork imports from Germany have the most to gain from an increase in meat import expenditure followed by Italian and Dutch poultry meat and French pork meat. Hence, a Greek exit from the financial crisis which most probably will lead to an expansion in meat market is favorable for above mentioned meats and counties. Moreover, the results indicate that in the pork market, France has a competitive advantage compared with the rest of the pork suppliers (Germany, Netherlands and ROW). Finally, poultry from Italy has a competitive advantage compared with the poultry from the Netherlands. The estimates of cross-price elasticities indicate asymmetric substitutability relationships between beef from France and various countries (ROW) and as regarding the lamp sector complementarity relationships between Bulgaria and New Zealand. Also, the competition is strong between France and Germany in the pork sector and between France and Others Counties (ROW) in the poultry sector. Finally, seasonality is found to have a significant effect in determining Greek meat imports.