French apple exports faced with the constraint of “in-transit cold treatment”: a case study of institutional “path dependence”[Les exportations françaises de pommes face à la contrainte du traitement au froid en transit. Un cas de dépendance de sentier institutionnel]

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the concept of path dependence through the case of a cold treatment technique used in the international apple trade during sea transit to prevent the introduction or dissemination of quarantine organisms in importing countries. We show that this technique is now systematically required and functions as a "de facto" standard, despite the existence of potentially less costly, and equally effective, alternative treatment methods. Drawing on the institutional literature on path dependence, we show that the negotiation costs that an exporting country would have to bear in order to have its trading partners accept a more efficient alternative method can be so high that it becomes preferable to continue using the current technique despite its higher adoption cost.