Productivity and competitiveness in the agri-food sector: Comparing Norway and Finland

This programme aims at meeting an increasing demand for research-based knowledge on the competitive position of Norwegian agriculture and food processing industries. This will be achieved through an international comparative study with a particular focus on productivity and the roles of institutional frameworks. The programme addresses productivity changes and their main sources in Norwegian agriculture compared with the productivity development in Finnish agriculture before and after Finland's EU-accessi on in 1995. It also addresses competitive strategies in the processing industry. The intension is to get a better understanding of core aspects of competitiveness by focusing on effects of micro- and macro-level institutions on availability and prices of input factors and competitive strategies within the agri-food sector. This combination of approaches aims at developing a deeper understanding of the unexplained variance that results from traditional econometric analyses. The SIP is divided into three m odules. Module 1 analyses farm-level panel data. It applies a microeconomic framework and econometric methods to estimate productivity changes and sources of productivity changes, and compares Norway and Finland. The aim of module 2 is to account for miss ing variables and reduce unexplained variance in module 1 by treating unexplained residual of the quantitative analyses as a set of cases that will be compared in a qualitative follow-up study. It will focus specifically on the role of social networks and trust-based, non-monetised exchange among farmers. The aim of module 3 is to address specifically the effects of macro-level institutions on competitive strategies within the agri-food sector, through a comparative study of Norway and Finland. What can b e learned from the development of the Finnish food industry after the EU-accession in 1995?