Replacement of lost supply after exporter collapses in the global seafood trade
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Abstract
Seafood is among the most heavily traded foods, and import dependence is often described as a source of vulnerability to production failures abroad. How much of the supply lost in such failures importers actually replace has not been measured across the trade as a whole. We use bilateral trade in 105 seafood products between 1995 and 2023 to identify 4,811 episodes in which an exporter's shipments of a product fell by at least half, and follow 116,512 importer–product markets for up to five years. Replacement depends sharply on how much of the market the failing exporter supplied. Where it held 25–50% of pre-shock imports, 84% of the lost quantity was made up from other sources within a year and total imports returned to baseline. Where it held 50–75% the replacement rate was 37%, and above 75% it was 10%; in these markets imports were still 28% and 60% below baseline three years later and unit values rose by up to 31%. Replacement came from suppliers already present in the market, not from new ones, and the number of alternative suppliers had no effect once the share lost was accounted for. More than half of all importer–product markets obtain at least 50% of their supply from one exporter. The results indicate that the exposure that matters is the share held by the largest supplier, and that it is common.
Keywords
Seafood trade; Supply shocks; Import dependence; Diversification; Trade resilience; BACI
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