Agricultural competitiveness of Vietnam by the RCA and the NRCA indices, and consistency of competitiveness indices

Abstract

This study measures the static and dynamic agricultural competitiveness of Vietnam by the RCA and the NRCA. The dynamics of the trade competitiveness indicators are assessed in three ways: OLS regression, Markov matrices, and trend analysis. The paper, moreover, tests the consistency between the RCA, NRCA, and RTA indices. The results show that (i) Vietnam, generally, achieves strong competitiveness in crop and shery sectors whilst it has weak competitiveness in livestock and processed food sectors; (ii) the country has the convergent pattern of agricultural competitiveness with the high stability of strong competitive and uncompetitive sectors; (iii) the country’s agricultural export strategy and competitiveness pattern are based on the natural-resource-intensive and traditional agricultural products with a slight improvement over time; and (iv) the RCA, NRCA, and RTA indices are strongly consistent in identifying the degrees of competitiveness and determining whether a country obtains competitiveness while they are weakly consistent in ranking competitiveness.