Hans-Martin Straume

European Review of Agricultural Economics Doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbae028

Agglomeration externality is a feature that has received limited attention in food production supply chains. Using highly disaggregated trade data, this paper investigates the presence of regional agglomeration effects in Norwegian seafood exports. Results indicate strong agglomeration effects in the exports of both farmed and harvested seafood at the region–product–destination level. Regional agglomeration of exporters affects the firms through different margins. In both industries, increased agglomeration results in larger volumes, while aquaculture exporters experience a small, negative, price effect. The largest firms, both in the number of employees and size of product portfolio, export most. We also document that agglomeration is important in explaining the creation of new regional product-destination-specific trade relationships, indicating the presence of regional spillover effects.

Aquaculture 582 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2023.740508

Product development is often an important component in increasing demand for successful aquaculture species. However, this topic has not received much attention due to limited data availability. In this paper, we investigate how the composition of salmon sales differ by product form by comparing the four largest European countries in terms of salmon consumption: France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The composition of salmon products varies significantly across countries, with unprocessed products dominating in Spain and highly processed products being the most important in the United Kingdom. We also find a high degree of price transmission for the less processed consumer products in all markets, while the price transmission is zero for most highly processed products. This is important since it implies that the more processed consumer products are largely are insulated from the high price volatility of salmon at the producer level.

Aquaculture 581 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2023.740437

Production of a number of important aquaculture species is highly export oriented, and intermediaries play an important role in the supply chains facilitating the trade. This paper examines the role of intermediaries (e.g. trading companies) in Norwegian salmon exports. Using customs data for the period 2016–2019, we identify two groups of firms in Norwegian salmon exports according to their main economic activity: producers that also export their salmon and independent intermediaries. We show that although both groups of firms have established a global trade network, several interesting differences exists between the two groups. A relatively small number of producers take a significantly higher share of overall exports than a large number of intermediaries, as there is a large number of smaller companies in the second group. On average, producers supply more distant markets with larger volumes than intermediaries. Market concentration measures indicate that a high share of the exports is concentrated among the top exporters in both groups of firms. Interestingly, intermediaries are in many markets able to charge a price premium for several salmon products relatively to the producers.

Aquaculture 577 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2023.739972

The largest companies in salmon aquaculture are rapidly getting bigger due to organic growth as well as mergers and acquisitions, and the largest are now multi-national companies. There are two main explanations for this growth: 1) An attempt to become large enough to exploit market power, or 2) Size is necessary to adopt new technologies that increase the efficient scale. In this paper, we investigate the degree of concentration in each of the main producer countries for Atlantic salmon, as well as globally for Atlantic salmon, all farmed salmon, and all salmon to account for the global nature of the market using Herfindahl-Hirschman Indexes. The results indicate a high degree of concentration in the smaller producer nations but not in Chile and Norway. Globally, the Atlantic salmon industry can be characterized as unconcentrated, and it becomes even more so when the supply of other farmed salmon and wild salmon is accounted for. Hence, the main motivation for the increased company size appears to be capacity to adopt new knowledge and technology.

Marine Policy 159 p. 1-9 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2023.105921

While seafood is a highly traded commodity, lack of data has largely prevented examination of the firms and industries that are conducting the actual transactions. In this paper we use highly disaggregated data to provide an overview of the seafood exports from Norway, the world’s 2nd largest seafood exporting country, and a country where fisheries as well as aquaculture are important industries. The industry has a global reach with Norwegian seafood reaching 172 different countries in the period 2016–2020. While there are as many as 437 different exporting firms, this is relatively few firms compared to the 11,024 different buyers that import Norwegian seafood. There is significant heterogeneity in the export sector from very small firms handling only a few products to very large firms handling a large variety of products. The average firm is quite specialized and serves only 9 markets. However, there are also a handful of large exporters who ship products from all three main sectors in the Norwegian seafood industry to a large number of markets. The 10% largest companies make up 39% of the total export value and provide significant synergies between the aquaculture, pelagic and whitefish sectors.

Aquaculture 572 p. 1-7 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2023.739520

Capture-based aquaculture (CBA) is an important branch of the aquaculture industry that differs from closed cycle farming in that the stocking material consists of captured wild fish or other aquatic organisms. By skipping the difficult early production stages of fish farming, producers can test whether assumed market advantages such as high quality and consistent supply result in higher prices – and whether these are high enough to incentivize further development of CBA and eventually close the production cycle. CBA-initiatives can also be supported by different policy measures to stimulate the activity. Since these measures involve costs, it is important to know at what level and for how long these measures should be implemented to promote economically sustainable CBA activities. We study CBA of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in Norway and find an average price premium of 26% compared to wild harvested cod, but with large interannual variation. However, declining quantities of cod from CBA following reductions in a quota bonus scheme to stimulate activity, indicates that the price premium is not sufficiently large to incentivize further development of the CBA branch of the Norwegian cod industry.

The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 125(3) p. 789-820 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/sjoe.12526

Research on trade relationships has documented a high rate of relationship breakup and churning. We use data on Norwegian exports to document two stylized facts about the stability of trade relationships. First, the probability of relationship breakup increases in the deviation of the relationship-specific price from a reference price. Second, relationship hazards follow Zipf's law. We propose a search model with limited information and search frictions to explain these facts. Reference prices provide information on outside trade options that inform optimal breakups, leading to the first stylized fact. Strong heterogeneity in breakup frictions across relationships can explain the Zipf's law hazards.

Science 375(6579) p. 386-388 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abl4756

American Journal of Agricultural Economics 104(1) p. 209-227 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajae.12230

Many price indices are constructed using bilateral transaction prices. This paper shows how the time series behavior of cross-sectional price moments can reveal useful information about pricing behavior in bilateral transactions markets. Inference is formalized in a microlevel price determination model that allows for rigid pricing at the level of individual buyer/seller transactions as well as asymmetries in bargaining power. The model is used to estimate pricing rigidities in Norwegian salmon export transactions. Results suggest a high rate of price revisions and an informative salmon price index. The moments suggest price revisions are conducted at fixed time intervals consistent with optimal price revisions under costly information and that price revisions are more likely when transaction prices are below the reference price in the market.

Aquaculture 561 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2022.738678

A rapidly growing literature investigates how the recent Covid-19 pandemic has affected international seafood trade along multiple dimensions, creating opportunities as well as challenges. This suggests that many of the impacts of the Covid measures are subtle and require disaggregated data to allow the impacts in different supply chains to be teased out. In aggregate, Norwegian salmon exports have not been significantly impacted by Covid-related measures. Using firm-level data to all export destinations to examine the effects of lockdowns in different destination countries in 2020, we show that the Covid-related lockdown measures significantly impacted trade patterns for four product forms of salmon. The results also illustrate how the Covid measures create opportunities, as increased stringency of the measures increased trade for two of the product forms. We also find significant differences among firms' responses, with large firms with larger trade networks reacting more strongly to the Covid measures. The limited overall impacts and the significant dynamics at the firm level clearly show the resiliency of the salmon supply chains.

Aquatic Living Resources 35(15) p. 1-11 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1051/alr/2022017

A rapidly growing literature shows that COVID-19 and the measures to contain the spread of the virus can have significant market impacts for seafood. These can be interruptions of production, or reductions in demand directly or indirectly due to supply chain challenges. In this paper we investigate the potential impacts of COVID-19 on seafood exports from Norway, the world’s second largest seafood exporter, using highly detailed data from 2016 through May 2021. These data allow us to assess upstream impacts in the seafood supply chain close to the producer level in aggregate and by main sector, impacts on the largest products, and the extent to which export firm structure and export markets served have changed. We find very few impacts in aggregate as well as for individual products, suggesting that the markets and supply chains used by Norwegian seafood exports were sufficiently robust and flexible to accommodate the shocks created by COVID-19. Given Norway’s size as a seafood exporter, the impact of COVID-19 has likely been moderate upstreams for a number of seafood sectors around the world, especially those in wealthy nations, with opportunities balancing out challenges, and that the supply chains have been highly resilient.

Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization Doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/jafio-2022-0017

Seafood is the food group with the highest share traded, and the U.S. is the world’s largest seafood importer, importing 79% of the seafood consumed. Hence, a study examining the impacts of the measures to contain COVID-19 on U.S. seafood imports will not only show how U.S. seafood availability has been affected, but will also give strong indications of how resiliently the global seafood markets have worked through the pandemic. We find that U.S. imports of seafood actually increased in 2020 and 2021, suggesting supply chains were able to adapt to potential disruptions. Moreover, for the 14 largest product forms imported to the U.S., there are no strong price movements. Given that there is a global market for most species groups, this adaption also suggests that the markets have worked quite well beyond the U.S. Hence, while there have undoubtedly been market shocks associated with the COVID-19 measures such as the reduction in demand from the restaurant sector and the increased sales in the retail sector, opportunities seem to balance out challenges, and the supply chains for seafood to the U.S. have been highly resilient.

Aquaculture Economics & Management 26(3) p. 253-258 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2022.2102091

Samfunnsøkonomen p. 54-65

Basert på opplysninger fra detaljerte tolldeklarasjoner fra norsk fastlandsøkonomi undersøker vi valutabruk i norsk utenrikshandel i perioden 2004–2018. Det er velkjent at dollaren har en dominerende posisjon som internasjonal valuta. Riktignok blir euroen mye brukt i handel med EU-land, men den er lite brukt utenfor Europa. Alle disse trekkene blir bekreftet i vår undersøkelse på norske data. Vi viser dessuten at bruk av hjemvalutaen (norske kroner) er hyppigere enn det som er vanlig for små land. Målt i transaksjonsmengde blir om lag 30 prosent av norsk eksport priset i norske kroner. For importens vedkommende er kroneprisingen enda høyere, dvs. om lag 40 prosent. Måler vi valuta-andeler basert på transaksjonsverdier endres bildet. Dollar blir nå den viktigste valutaen i norsk eksport, og kroneposisjonen svekkes. Naturlig nok varierer valutabruk med landområder. For eksempel er dollar hyppig brukt i handel med land som tidligere tilhørte Sovjetunionen, samt i Kina og i sørøstasiatiske land. Vi finner også at valutabruken varierer med varetypen det handles i. For norsk eksport estimeres en multinomisk logitmodell der betydningen av transaksjonsverdi bekreftes som svært viktig. En annen viktig forklaringsvariabel for norske eksportørers valutavalg er størrelsen på per capita-inntekten i det landet vi handler med.

Journal of Wine Economics 16(1) p. 68-85 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/jwe.2020.37

As for all traded products, aggregated wine imports build on numerous trades at the firm level. To ensure consumers access to a variety of wines with different qualities, importers need to connect to different wine exporters. Some of these relationships will last for a long time, while the duration of others may be short. In this article, we employ transaction-level data to analyze the duration of trade relationships in wine imports to Norway from 2004 to 2014. We find that most relationships are short-lived, as more than 75% of trade relationships end after less than two years. Furthermore, we find that higher-quality wines, as indicated by the import price, increase trade duration. Deeper firm-to-firm trade relationships for more exclusive wines are likely due to higher search costs for high-quality products. The results also show that the size of the initial trade between the partners, or degree of commitment, is a positive determinant for persistent relationships.

Agribusiness 37(4) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.21704

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. [EconLit Citations: F14, Q22].

Empirical Economics 61(1959–1983) p. 1-25 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-020-01923-2

Access to highly disaggregated trade data allows for a more nuanced investigation of different margins of trade, and the factors known to influence them. In this paper, the number of importers and shipments to each importer is investigated together with the more traditional margins. Potential explanatory factors of these trade margins are combined from three literature strands in addition to the standard gravity variables; firm productivity, per-unit shipment costs and country-specific trade costs. The empirical results show, not unexpectedly, that insights from all these different strands of literature influence trade margins significantly. In particular, the number of shipments per importer increases with distance, degree of remoteness and per-shipment cost, and the number of importers decreases with the distance, remoteness and per-unit shipping cost. This indicates that increased trade costs make exporters economize in existing networks. Finally, disaggregating the data into three main product categories using Rauch’s classification, trade patterns are shown to vary by product group.

Aquaculture Economics & Management 24(2) p. 181-193 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2019.1708995

Geographical concentration of industries tends to be important for firms that depend on innovation and are intensive in the use of specialized technology and labor. In this paper, we investigate the interaction between agglomeration and trade performance in the Norwegian aquaculture industry. We include a variable for regional clustering in a standard gravity model and estimate its impact on different margins of trade. When controlling for destination country, we find that firms that operate in clusters obtain higher export prices and ship more frequently and in smaller bulks. For a highly perishable product like fresh salmon, this may suggest that firms in clusters are served by more efficient supply chains bringing the product to market with timely and efficient logistics.

Aquaculture Economics & Management 25(2) Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2020.1857469

This study investigates potential economic reasons why the production of trout is maintained in Norway by analyzing prices and production for Norwegian Atlantic salmon and trout. The species Atlantic salmon dominates the global salmon market, but its two largest producers, Norway and Chile also farm in sea pens significant quantities of large rainbow trout (as opposed to portion-sized Rainbow trout farmed in freshwaters in other parts of the World, e.g., Iran, Peru, Turkey, and others). Suggesting that these trout have some attributes that make it a useful complement to Atlantic salmon. We investigate development in supply volumes of these species and conduct a cointegration analysis using monthly prices from 2000 to 2018. The results show that the markets for fresh and frozen rainbow trout are tightly integrated with fresh Atlantic salmon, and, where the latter is a price leader. This means that many consumers consider the two products as substitutes, with no clear preferences. There is no apparent productivity argument for the continued production of rainbow trout vis-à-vis Atlantic salmon. However, there may exist a fringe of consumers that prefer its characteristics, motivating firms to maintain its production as a means of diversification.

Marine Resource Economics 35(1) p. 83-96 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/707067

Seafood is the world’s most traded food product. In recent years, aquaculture has become an increasingly important part of seafood production, facilitating increased trade. However, despite evidence that fish farmers have better ability to target markets and ship their seafood through more efficient supply chains (due to the higher degree of control with the production process), little attention has been given to the fact that this is likely to influence trade patterns as well. This article investigates if trade margins for aquaculture products differ from trade in wild seafood products along three margins of trade, in addition to total export value on export data for Norway, the world’s second largest seafood exporting country. The results indicate aquaculture products are different. In particular, aquaculture products are influenced by more factors than fisheries products (such as transportation costs and per-unit shipment costs), highlighting another dimension where the control of the production process can be used to improve competitiveness. Moreover, exports of aquaculture products increase with a country’s wealth level, reflecting producers’ ability to target higher paying markets.

Journal of futures markets 40(4) p. 617-631 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/fut.22088

This paper uses transaction data to examine hedging efficiency in a new futures exchange; the Fish Pool salmon futures exchange in Norway. The paper utilizes data on firm‐level exporter/importer transaction prices to quantify firm‐level futures hedging efficiency. This allows us to address heterogeneity in hedging efficiency and basis risk at the firm level. The main result of this paper shows that larger firms with greater trade partner diversification have lower basis risk. Such firms align their internal transaction price closer to the common spot price in the market, which encourages greater futures market participation. Results are discussed in light of recent declines in participation in the salmon futures exchange.

Aquaculture Economics & Management Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2019.1683914

This paper discusses how transaction data can be used to shed light on trade dynamics in seafood exports, with Norwegian salmon exports as the case. There is a large literature on exports and imports of salmon between countries, but less is known about how the heterogeneity of exporters and importers relates to the aggregate data. We utilize transaction data for all exports of salmon in the period 2010–2014 and show that firms involved in salmon exports holds several of the characteristics that are commonly found in the international trade literature, but differs in some important dimensions. Most exporters of salmon connect to relatively many importers and serve many different destination markets. Short-lived trade relations are shown to account for a large share of export values.

Applied Economics Letters 27(2) p. 145-149 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2019.1610702

While variation in unit value most commonly has been associated with quality in the trade literature, observed differences in prices between markets might also be explained by variation in market concentration and the degree of competition. Using transaction data on Norwegian exports of salmon, we introduce a Herfindahl index as a measure of competition in a standard gravity model. We find that competition typically is weaker in small and distant markets that due to high trade costs are served by relatively few firms. We argue that the anti-competitive impact of trade costs may explain price differentiation between markets even for homogeneous products.

Aquaculture Economics & Management 23(2) p. 188-203 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2018.1554722

This paper investigates how pricing efficiency of Norwegian salmon exports varies across destination market characteristics. Efficiency is defined as the rate at which individual transaction prices adjust to common market information, and is estimated by dynamic fixed effects panel models with parameters conditional on trade attributes using micro-level trade data. Our results show that contract type (Incoterms) used in transactions can be used to segment the Norwegian export markets into three types: (1) high-value trade to large distant markets, (2) medium-value trade to close high-income markets, and (3) lower-value large bulk trades to lower-income close markets. We find that pricing efficiency is lowest for committed trades over long distance using planes, and highest for less committed large bulk trades to close markets. Despite significant heterogeneity, the majority of salmon price variation (around ¾) is common, providing a clear justification for the representativeness of a salmon price index.

Land Economics 95(2) p. 246-257 Doi: https://doi.org/10.3368/LE.95.2.246

A vast literature in fisheries economics focuses on drivers of fishers’ behavior with limited attention given to what happens once the fish are landed. This often strongly contrasts with a main policy focus on coastal communities, with fisheries management as an additional instrument in supporting livelihoods. This study shows that the number of Norwegian landing plants has been reduced in recent decades, and that quantity landed, annual plant operation time, and attracting smaller vessels decrease the probability of exit. Interestingly, plants in communities with additional landing locations have lower probabilities of exit, pointing to an industry cluster effect

Journal of Commodity Markets 12 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomm.2017.12.002

In recent years, trade dynamics have been receiving increased attention, and the general literature indicates that commodities are different. In this paper, the duration of trade relationships for Norwegian export firms to various markets is investigated for six product forms of one commodity, cod. The results indicate that the duration of most trade relationships is very short, and shorter than what is normally reported in the literature. Still, the substantial variation in duration by product form and factors influencing it, indicates heterogeneous dynamics for each supply chain even for slight differences in the characteristics of a commodity. Moreover, the short duration of trade relationships in the supply chains for Norwegian cod indicates that they remain very traditional food supply chains, with few attempts at reducing transaction costs through vertical coordination or relationships.

Aquaculture Economics & Management 21(1) p. 88-104 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13657305.2017.1262477

Success in the export markets is not only about entry into markets, but also about survival and export growth. General empirical evidence suggests that high export growth is positively associated with the duration of trade relationships. For exporters of highly perishable goods such as fresh salmon, efficient trade relations are important to prevent loss of product quality as time from harvest to final consumption increases. This research analyzes the duration of trade relationships for Norwegian salmon exports. Using highly disaggregated data for the 1999–2009 period, the trade relations for exports of fresh-farmed salmon from Norway are remarkably short. At the firm-to-country level the mean duration is 4 years, Furthermore, the degree of dynamics increases as the data becomes more disaggregated. Market uncertainty in the form of transportation costs and export to countries in the EU are associated with a larger probability for failure. Factors that are associated with a reduced risk of exiting the market are the size of the initial shipment between the trading partners, continuing large shipments and the size of the exporting firm.

Marine Resource Economics 29(4) p. 391-409 Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/678930

The purpose of this paper is to examine the choice of currency for Norwegian salmon exporters. The choice of invoicing currency will affect prices in different markets as well as risk, factors that are increasingly important as the supply chain for salmon is becoming more sophisticated and more transactions mechanisms are introduced. The results indicate that destination-specific market characteristics have impacts as to the choice of invoicing strategy. Norwegian salmon exporters primarily invoice in the export market currency (47% of the exported quantity), but also use a vehicle currency and producer pricing (19%) in a significant number of transactions. The euro is the preferred vehicle currency (18%), closely followed by US dollar (USD) (16%). The USD is the dominating invoicing currency for exports beyond Europe.

Samfunnsøkonomen 69(4) p. 60-68

Samfunnsøkonomen 63(4) p. 60-68

Norsk økonomisk tidsskrift 122(2) p. 36-50