South America and Global Value Chains - Productivity and competition in agri-food industry

The purpose of this study is to contribute to better understand the complexity of modern trade relationships by addressing three key issues in the three chapters of this thesis, ordered from the most general to the most specific subject. The first chapter deals with the relationship between productivity level and the internationalization status of firms (importers, exporters, two-ways traders, domestic firms, and Global Value Chain (GVC) members) for a panel of countries located in South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay. In this chapter, a clear difference in terms of productivity is observed between internationalised and domestic firms as well as between GVC members and non-GVC members. The results observe are perfectly coherent and in line with the NNTT literature which suggests that only the most productive firms internationalise. Results of Chapter I revealed that the productivity of the food sector in Argentina has special characteristics. Therefore, the Chapter 2 focuses on the food industry and more particularly on Argentina’s food industry. Argentina is indeed a country with a long history of export-oriented agro-food industry. The aim of this chapter was to analyse the participation of Argentina’s food industry in GVC chains and its implication for competitiveness. As expected, the results evidenced that Argentina’s food industry is on average more productive than the other industries considered together. In addition, it seems that firms participating in GVC and, more generally, internationalised firms, perform better. This results are in line with the results of our first chapter as well as with the NNTT literature. Finally, since recent years, the Argentinian agro-food industry is increasingly oriented towards the production and export of soybeans, the Chapter 3 is focused on analysing this market; specifically, the differentiation strategies that two direct competitors in this market carry out to compete: Argentina and Brazil, which are responsible for about 50% of soybean world production. To do so, I use a recently revised version of the constant market share (CMS) analysis method to decompose the aggregated market share of an exporter and extract the direct competition effect (competitiveness). The results of this analysis indicate that what seems at first sight to be Brazil's total domination over Argentina in the exchange of soybeans reflects a partial truth. Argentina is competitive when it comes to high quality, even though Brazil has a much higher rate of growth in the production of this product in recent years. Therefore, after the analysis, it seems evident that only the most productive companies and economies will be able to compete and survive in the world market. Additionally, only those countries which are able to adopt business strategies which allow them to differentiate their productions in the fierce competition of world market will consolidate and expand their positions.