Olive oil market review #1

We would like to start today a new activity, a database of references of selected pubilcation about the olive oil market.
There are really few energies paid to shed a light on this market. As we know, the olive oil market raised to a considerable total value only in the most recent years, and this could be the main reason behind the aforementioned lack of focus. There are really few articles about international trade dynamics, consumer preferences, industrial organization. A relatively fair amount of papers contributes to uncover the policy related to the olive oil sector. Given the specific nature of both the production function and the industry, and due to the large amount of small-to-medium sized farms involved (mainly in the mediterrean area), subsidies always played a relevant role, thus leading to a need for depth analysis.
Most of the contributions, use descriptive statistics and qualitative analysis methods. Most of the attempts of inferential modelling applied to the olive oil market deserve to be refined, some presents a considerable level of analytical skills.
Finally, many articles are related to the health and cultural implication of the olive oil consumption and production.
We hope, by opening this session, to rise interest for the modelling of the olive oil sector's dynamics and to a create a virtual place where compare perspectives, ideas, and results.

Reputation: does it matter?

How much could a company's reputation influence the purchasing behavior of the ultimate woman or man between the shelves of a Deli or iper-market thousands of miles far away?
Guess.
And what about if we consider a Country's reputation? Well, hundreds of pages have been written about reputation and business, but we feel the need for you to read this unpredictably detailed article about italian's ability in olive oil frauds, that the "The New Yorker", one of the most prestigious and "elite" american cultural magazines, edited three year ago (by Tom Mueller), titled:
"Letters from Italy: Slippery business - the trade in adultareted olive oil". (go to)

Now, the question is: where did Tom get to know about it?

"Fraud is so widespread that few growers can make an honest living" one expert says.

Tom Mueller - The New Yorker, 13 August 2007.

Markets "ignoring" the crisis

There is a world wide crisis, and there are places were crisis means growth. We do not intend to infer about the global scenarios effects on the olive oil international trade, however, there are Countries were the consumption of olive oil is all but decreasing. China, Brazil, Poland and Australia.

These seem to be the emerging "Fantastic Four" of the olive oil market. while the World average growht rate was downsloping at a yearly pace of -1.7% (between 2007 and 2010), mainly due to the recent economic crisis claimed to be the worst since the '29, these markets - net importers, except Australia - were showing an increasing demand for olive oil. Take two minuets of your time and look at Brazil: in the last 10 years Brazil became the 5th market for the olive oil import values, growing at an average yearly pace of +21% (+24% in the last 3 years, disregarding any economic crisis). During the first semester of 2011, Brazil registered a +35.5% compared to the same time frame in 2010. Who took advanteges of such a growth? Spain and Portugal increased their sells by the 50% in the first semester of 2011. Italians, who have (or had?) the fame of being the greatest olive oil merchants, seemingly did not ride the Brazilian boom: their exports grew by the 0.5%.
On the other hand, Italy was able to attain better results in Poland and Australia, holding on its market quota - scaling up of a 5% in Australia.