Perish or prosper: Trade patterns for highly perishable products

In recent years trade with highly perishable agricultural products like fresh fish, berries and cut flowers has increased substantially. The perishability of these products appears to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to food trade, which emphasizes the importance of large shipments to reduce transportation costs. In this paper, gravity models and several margins of trade are estimated for the trade with fresh salmon, a highly perishable product. The results indicate that increased geographical distance have a larger negative effect than what is generally reported in the literature. Most interestingly, the number of exporters and the shipment frequency increase while there is little impact on shipment size when trade increase. Hence, freshness and possibly avoidance of losses by not selling products by the expiration date seem to be emphasized rather than economies of scale in transportation.