Executive Summary

Geographical Indication represents the EU workhorse policy to promote food quality, preserving the identity of local products but also increasing their value through distinct territorial characteristics. Beyond ensuring food quality and market competitiveness, GIs have evolved into a strategic tool for promoting rural areas’ economic development, providing socio-economic benefits like premium pricing, enhanced farmers’ income, trade advantages, and sustainability.
In the international trade framework, the EU has progressively advocated increasing the protection of GI in trade agreements to avoid the misuse of the names of many well-known GIs.
The academic literature on GIs in a trade context has mainly focused on the quantitative estimation of the export-promoting effects of GIs. At the same time, a few contributions have analyzed their nature as Non-Tariff Measures (NTMs) in EU-importing countries. Overall, the economic literature indicates a consensus that GIs enhance trade by contributing to premium pricing increased export values, and volumes.
The four chapters of this deliverable embrace different topics related to the role of GIs in the international trade framework. The initial chapter assesses whether exporters of PDO-labelled products, the stricter form of geographical Indication, can charge higher markups than non-PDO products when considering exports of the Italian cheese industry. The second chapter investigates the impact of import competition on Italian food firms, distinguishing between those producing GIs and non-GIs. The third chapter relies on a gravity model to assess whether WTO intellectual property provisions promote exports of Geographical Indication wines. Lastly, the fourth chapter tests the influence of GI protection in bilateral agreements on French foodstuff exports.