IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_10234.html

Quantifying Consumer Taste in Trade: Evidence from the Food Industry

Author

Listed:
  • Bee Yan Aw
  • Yi Lee
  • Hylke Vandenbussche

Abstract

This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from 1998-2005 to generate a “taste distance” measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate consumer taste using a control function approach and perform a decomposition of export revenues of firm-products to establish the importance of representative consumer taste relative to quality and marginal cost in export success. We find substantial taste heterogeneity in food exports across destination countries. Overall, in the large majority of food exports, consumer taste is an important and separate demand determinant to explain export revenues. Depending on the product, taste for a product explains between 4-30% of export revenues. Thus, any taste shock due to events such as pandemics or climate change, may induce substantial changes in export profitability of firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Bee Yan Aw & Yi Lee & Hylke Vandenbussche, 2023. "Quantifying Consumer Taste in Trade: Evidence from the Food Industry," CESifo Working Paper Series 10234, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10234.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fan, Haichao & Li, Yao Amber & Yeaple, Stephen R., 2018. "On the relationship between quality and productivity: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 28-49.
    2. James J. Heckman & Rodrigo Pinto, 2022. "Causality and Econometrics," NBER Working Papers 29787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Andrew Atkeson & Ariel Burstein, 2008. "Pricing-to-Market, Trade Costs, and International Relative Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1998-2031, December.
    4. Peter K. Schott, 2004. "Across-Product Versus Within-Product Specialization in International Trade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 647-678.
    5. James Heckman & Salvador Navarro-Lozano, 2004. "Using Matching, Instrumental Variables, and Control Functions to Estimate Economic Choice Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 30-57, February.
    6. Jose de Sousa & Eve Sihra & Thierry Mayer, 2019. "Market Integration and Convergence in Consumption Patterns," 2019 Meeting Papers 1178, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    7. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2016. "Quality, trade, and exchange rate pass-through," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 61-80.
    8. Pierre Dubois & Rachel Griffith & Aviv Nevo, 2014. "Do Prices and Attributes Explain International Differences in Food Purchases?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(3), pages 832-867, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2022. "Markups, quality, and trade costs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    2. Shrimoyee Ganguly & Rajat Acharyya, 2024. "Money, exchange rate and export quality," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(1), pages 118-144, January.
    3. Lashkaripour, Ahmad, 2020. "Discrete trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    4. Bee Yan Aw & Yi Lee & Hylke Vandenbussche, 2020. "Consumer taste in trade," Discussion Papers 2020-15, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    5. Charlotte Emlinger & Karine Latouche, 2021. "When Quality Management Helps Agri-food Firms to Export," Post-Print hal-03518705, HAL.
    6. Vandenbussche, Hylke & Aw-Roberts, Bee Yan & Lee, Yi, 2019. "The Importance of Consumer Taste in Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 13614, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Fan, Haichao & Li, Yao Amber & Xu, Sichuang & Yeaple, Stephen R., 2020. "Quality, variable markups, and welfare: A quantitative general equilibrium analysis of export prices," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Md Deluair Hossen, 2023. "Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Data Frequency: Firm-Level Evidence from Bangladesh," Papers 2303.04101, arXiv.org.
    9. Freitag, Andreas & Lein, Sarah M., 2023. "Endogenous product adjustment and exchange rate pass-through," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    10. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2016. "Quality, trade, and exchange rate pass-through," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 61-80.
    11. Stephen J. Redding & David E. Weinstein, 2017. "Aggregating from Micro to Macro Patterns of Trade," NBER Working Papers 24051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Francesco Guerra, 2023. "How taste proximity affects consumer quality valuation of imported varieties: Evidence from the French food sector," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(9), pages 2857-2890, September.
    13. George Alessandria & Joseph P. Kaboski, 2011. "Pricing-to-Market and the Failure of Absolute PPP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 91-127, January.
    14. Vandenbussche, Hylke & Aw-Roberts, Bee Yan & Lee, Yi, 2018. "Decomposing Firm-Product Appeal: How important is Consumer Taste?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12707, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. A. Auer, Raphael & Chaney, Thomas & Sauré, Philip, 2018. "Quality pricing-to-market," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 87-102.
    16. Jiemiao Dong & Yinxia Mi & Zhuangxiong Yu, 2022. "Industrial plans, export destinations and product quality," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(3), pages 812-840, March.
    17. Zhang, Wenqian & Wei, Hao, 2025. "The impact of RMB exchange rate changes on the prices of imported products by Chinese firms," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 464-478.
    18. Casas, Camila, 2020. "Industry heterogeneity and exchange rate pass-through," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    19. Weikang Zhang & Isabel K. M. Yan & Yin-Wong Cheung, 2023. "The COVID-19 pandemics and import demand elasticities: evidence from China’s customs data," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, December.
    20. Hu, Cui & Parsley, David & Tan, Yong, 2021. "Exchange rate induced export quality upgrading: A firm-level perspective," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 336-348.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10234. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.