Determinants of international beer export

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to identify factors influencing dynamics of international beer export. The Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood estimator was employed to estimate the export determinants of the biggest global beer exporters to 199 destinations between 2000 and 2017. We estimated that international beer export is positively influenced by gross domestic product of importing countries and cultural similarities. Trade between countries that share common borders, same language or colonial links has shown to be a very strong and positive determinant. We found a significant role of customs unions and signed free trade agreements; however, this result was not robust across all estimated models. Beer export is negatively affected by the distance between trading countries and their landlockedness, which confirms the relevance of transport cost in beer trade. Beer exports are declining with rise in population of importing countries, which signals an advantage in targeting countries with less differentiated beer supply.