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ABSTRACT
The effectiveness of the California raisin industry's export promotion programs in Japan and in the United Kingdom is addressed in this article. An econometric import demand equation was estimated for each of the two foreign markets. The results indicate that the export promotion programs have increased the demand for California raisins in both Japan and the United Kingdom. The benefitcost ratios for the Japanese and the United Kingdom markets were computed to be 5:1 and 15:1, respectively; indicating that the benefit of export promotion in terms of expanding export revenue was greater than the cost of the programs. Optimality analysis suggest that, while the current export promotion spending level in Japan is about optimal, the industry should explore the option of investing more money in its export promotion activities in the United Kingdom. [EconLit citations: Q130: Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness; Q170: Agriculture in International Trade; Q180: Agricultural Policy; Food Policy.] © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the missions of the Raisin Administrative Committee (RAC, 1999) is to conduct export promotion programs in various countries with the principle aim of increasing exports of California raisins. The RAC is part of a Federal Raisin Marketing Order, which was authorized under the 1937 Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act, and was established to foster orderly marketing conditions for the raisin industry. Under the 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act, all federal marketing orders operating promotion programs are required to have economic evaluations conducted to ascertain the extent of their impact on the market. In this article, the results of an economic analysis of the market impacts of the raisin export promotion programs operated by the RAC are presented. Because the two largest markets in terms of California raisin export promotion are Japan and the United Kingdom, this research focuses on the effectiveness of the California raisin industry's export promotion in those two countries.
Specifically, the study addresses four important questions designed to ascertain the effectiveness of the RAC's export promotion programs over the period 1965-1998. First, what is the responsiveness of the demand for California raisins in Japan and in the United Kingdom with respect to the RAC's export promotion? To answer this question, we estimate per capita import demand equations...