Effetti degli accordi Euro-Mediterrani sul comparto dell'ortofrutta fresca

In 1995, the European Union (EU) Member States and 12 Mediterranean countries launched in Barcelona a liberalization process that aims at establishing a free trade area (to be realized by 2010) and at promoting a sustainable and balanced economic development by the adoption of a new generation of Agreements: the Euro-Mediterranean Agreements (EMA). For the Mediterranean partner countries, the main concern is a better access for their fruit and vegetable exports to the European market. These products represent the main exports of these countries, and the EU is their first trading partner. On the other side, for the EU the main issue is not only the promotion of its products, but also the protection of its fruit and vegetables producers. Moreover, the trade with third countries is the key element of the Common Market Organization of the sector. Fruit and vegetables represent a very sensitive sector since their high seasonality, high perishability, and especially since the production of the Mediterranean countries is often similar to the European Mediterranean’s countries one. In fact, the agreements define preferences at the entrance of the EU market providing limited concessions for each partner, for specific products, limited quantities and calendars. This research tries to analyze the bilateral trade volume for fresh fruit and vegetables in the European and Italian markets in order to assess the effects of Mediterranean liberalization on this sector. Free trade of agricultural products represents a very actual topic in international trade and the Mediterranean countries, recognised as big producers of fruit and vegetables, as big exporters of their crops and actually significantly present on the European market, could be high competitors with the inward production because the outlet could be the same. The goal of this study is to provide some considerations about the competitiveness of mediterranean fruit and vegetables productions after Barcelona Process, in a first step for the European market and then also for the Italian one. The aim is to discuss the influence of the euro-mediterranean agreements on the fruit and vegetables trade between 10 foreign Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, and Turkey) and 15 EU countries in the period 1995-2007, by means of a gravity model, which is a widespread methodology in international trade analysis. The basic idea of gravity models is that bilateral trade from one country to another (as the dependent variable) can be explained by a set of factors: - factors that capture the potential of a country to export goods and services; - factors that capture the propensity of a country to imports goods and services; - any other forces that either attract or inhibit bilateral trade. This analysis compares only imports’ flows by Europe and by Italy (in volumes) from Mediterranean countries, since the exports’ flows toward those foreign countries are not significant, especially for Italy. The market of fruit and vegetables appears as a high heterogeneous group so it is very difficult to show a synthesis of the analysis performed and the related results. In fact, this sector includes the so called “poor products” (such as potatoes and legumes), and the “rich product”, such as nuts or exotic fruit, and there are a lot of different goods that arouse a dissimilar consumer demand which directly influence the import requirements. Fruit and vegetables sector includes products with extremely different biological cycles, leading to a very unlike seasonality. Moreover, the Mediterranean area appears as a highly heterogeneous bloc, including countries which differ from the others for economic size, production potential, capability to export and for the relationships with the EU. The econometric estimation includes 68 analyses, 34 of which considering the European import and 34 the Italian import and the products are examined in their aggregated form and in their disaggregated level. The analysis obtains a very high R2 coefficient, which means that the methodology is able to assess the import effects on fruit and vegetables associated to the Association Agreements, preferential tariffs, regional integration, and others information involved in the equation. The empirical analysis suggests that fruits and vegetables trade flows are well explained by some parameters: size of the involved countries (especially GDP and population of the Mediterranean countries); distances; prices of imported products; local production for the aggregated products; preferential expressed tariffs like duty free; sub-regional agreements that enforce the export capability. The euro-mediterranean agreements are significant in some of the performed analysis, confirming the slow and gradual evolution of euro- Mediterranean liberalization. The euro-mediterranean liberalization provides opportunities from one side, and imposes a new important challenge from the other side. For the EU the chance is that fruit and vegetables imported from the mediterranean area represent a support for local supply and a possibility to increase the range of products existing on the market. The challenge regards the competition of foreign products with the local ones since the types of productions are similar and markets coincide, especially in the Italian issue. We need to apply a strategy based not on a trade antagonism, but on the realization of a common plane market with the Mediterranean countries. This goal could be achieved enhancing the industrial cooperation in addition to commercial relationships, and increasing investments’ flows in the Mediterranean countries aiming at transforming those countries from potential competitors to trade partners and creating new commercial policies to export towards extra European countries.

Essays in Environmental Economics

This dissertation comprises four essays on the topic of environmental economics and industrial organization. In the first essay, we develop a two-country world differential game model with a polluting firm in each country to investigate the equilibrium of the game between firms when they decide to trade or not and to see under which conditions social welfare coincides with the market equilibrium. In the second essay, we built a model where firms strategically choose whether to participate in an auction/lottery to attain pollution permits, or instead invest in green R&D, to show that, somewhat counterintuitively, a desirable side effect of the auction is in fact that of fostering environmental R&D in an admissible range of the model parameters. The third essay investigates a second-best trade agreement between two countries when pollution spillovers are asymmetric to examine the strategic behavior of governments in using pollution taxes and tariffs under trade liberalization. The fouth essay studies the profitability of exogenous output constraint in a differential game model with price dynamics under the feedback strategies.

Essays in Industrial Organization

This dissertation comprises four essays on the topic of industrial organization and environmental economics. The first essay investigates the profitability of horizontal mergers of firms with price adjustments. We take a differential game approach and both the open-loop as well as the closed-loop equlibria are considered. In the second essay, using the same approach as the first one, we study the profitability of horizontal merger of firms where the demand function is nonlinear. We take into consideration the open-loop equilibrium. The third essay studies the profitability of exogenous output constraint in a differential game model with price dynamics under the feedback strategies. The fourth essay investigates a second-best trade agreement between two countries when pollution spillovers are asymmetric to examine the strategic behavior of governments in using pollution taxes and tariffs under trade liberalization.

La riforma dell'ordinamento portuale

Il presente elaborato si prefigge l’obiettivo di verificare la reale e concreta applicazione delle disposizioni derivanti dall’ordinamento comunitario, all’interno della realtà portuale italiana, che, consapevole del fatto che i porti costituiscono forti infrastrutture nonché fonte di ricchezza per il paese, avverte l’esigenza di modificare fermamente il regime amministrativo dei propri porti. Le profonde innovazioni introdotte nel sistema portuale italiano a seguito della riforma del 1994, attraverso l’introduzione di assetti istituzionali ed organizzativi, hanno favorito la crescita dei traffici marittimi del paese. In ragione dei significativi mutamenti che hanno segnato la realtà economica mondiale negli ultimi anni, in cui si è assistito, al fenomeno della c.d. globalizzazione economica, che spinge verso la delocalizzazione produttiva e verso l’apertura di nuovi mercati di consumo, particolare attenzione è stata posta alle esigenze nascenti all’interno del sistema portuale, di apportare delle significative modifiche alla Legge 84/1994, per affrontare le nuove sfide poste dalla competizione comunitaria ed internazionale, e migliorare l’efficienza delle attività produttive ed uniformare l’impianto normativo. Nello specifico è stato esaminato il testo unificato della recente proposta di legge di riforma del settore portuale, le cui novità maggiormente rilevanti si sviluppano essenzialmente su tre livelli: la governance dei porti, la programmazione e la pianificazione delle aree, le attività economiche ed i servizi portuali. In maniera precisa e dettagliata, si è proceduto all’analisi dei servizi portuali tecnico-nautici, prestando attenzione alle prospettive di liberalizzazione del settore ed al principio di uniformità in materia tariffaria, al fine di rendere detti servizi funzionali e trasparenti. Infine, l’attenzione è stata posta alla realtà portuale a livello comunitario, esaminando le recenti disposizioni emanate dalle istituzioni comunitarie, al fine di verificare il miglior funzionamento dei porti marittimi e lo sviluppo della rete transeuropea di trasporto.

L'autotrasporto di cose per conto di terzi: Profili tariffari e prospettive di sviluppo

Il presente elaborato concerne le problematiche giuridiche connesse alla regolamentazione del settore dell’autotrasporto di cose per conto di terzi in Italia, con particolare attenzione alla disciplina dei profili tariffari ed alle dinamiche consolidatesi nella prassi in relazione alle pratiche di dumping sociale, outsourcing e delocalizzazione. Nella prima parte, dopo una premessa finalizzata a descrivere le caratteristiche strutturali dei fornitori di servizi di autotrasporto in ambito nazionale e comunitario nonchè le principali peculiarità del mercato di riferimento, viene descritta ed analizzata l’evoluzione normativa e giurisprudenziale verificatasi con riguardo ai profili tariffari dell’autotrasporto, esaminando in particolare le caratteristiche ed i profili di criticità propri delle discipline in materia di “tariffe a forcella” di cui alla L. n. 298/1974 e di “costi minimi di sicurezza” di cui all’art. 83-bis del D.L. n. 112/2008, fino a giungere all’analisi degli scenari conseguenti alla recente riforma del settore apportata dalla Legge di Stabilità 2015 (L. 23/12/2014, n. 190). Nella seconda parte, vengono esaminate alcune tematiche problematiche che interessano il settore, sia a livello nazionale che comunitario, e che risultano strettamente connesse ai sopra menzionati profili tariffari. In particolare, si fa riferimento alle fattispecie del cabotaggio stradale, del distacco transazionale di lavoratori e dell’abuso della libertà di stabilimento in ambito comunitario concretantesi nella fattispecie della esterovestizione. Tali problematiche sono state analizzate dapprima attraverso la ricostruzione del quadro normativo nazionale e comunitario di riferimento; in secondo luogo, attraverso l’esame dei profili critici emersi alla luce delle dinamiche di mercato invalse nel settore e, infine, in relazione all’analisi dello scenario futuro desumibile dalle iniziative legislative ed amministrative in atto, nonché dagli indirizzi interpretativi affermatisi in ambito giurisprudenziale.