대체탄성치를 이용한 수출시장에서의 농산물 통합 경쟁력(Aggregate Competitiveness) 분석

An Analysis of Aggregate Competitiveness of Exporting Agricultural Goods Using Substitution Elasticity

It is of great importance to analyze the competitive ness of Korea s agricultural products at international markets in that such an analysis provides us with the knowledge on where our agricultural products are and how strong the competition is. The mai n factors to determine the competitiveness of a product at market is degree of differentiation that reflects the consumers preferences. Differentiation could be considered a process that makes a product more heterogeneous to its substitutes. In general, the demand of highly differentiated products is hardly affected by the change in price of substitutes. Thus, the degree of substitution can be used as one of th e indices of competitiveness. Feenstra suggested a way of measuring substitution elasticities through CES utility function. The elasticities estimated can be interpreted to indicate the competitiveness of a country at world market. Estimated elasticities of substitution of Korea are much larger than those of other countries, which says that agricultural products of Korea are even less competitive at international markets. The US s elasticity of substitution was smallest among the estimates, so the US products have the strongest competitiveness at exporting market.