Empirical Analysis On Factors Affecting Thailand's Agricultural International Competitiveness

Due to the intense competition in the agricultural trade worldwide,it is important to Thailand whose national economy counted on agricultural sector.Thai government has to consider new strategies to sustain and enhance international market competitiveness of their agricultural products.Therefore,Thai economy are already shifted the concentration to manufacturing and service sectors instead.However,there is no reason of Thailand to overlook its importance to Thai economy since majority of labor force still lives in this sector.Thai agricultural competitiveness is more outstanding than others in term of both value and volume of export products.Thailand's agricultural international trade stands very competitive by international competitiveness indicators in many kinds of products such as rice,natural rubber,cassava,refined sugar,and canned chicken.This dissertation attempts to determine the factors affecting Thailand's agricultural international competitiveness and to discover the correlation between these factors and Thai agricultural competitiveness inherited.In order to achieve these objectives,this research applied the linkage between international trade theory and international competitiveness theorem.Quantitative research method was highlighted.Firstly,the author adopted calculations of the competitiveness indicators method to determine the competitiveness of Thai agricultural trade competitiveness,then,compared with the CLMV countries and China.Finally,the empirical analysis was undertaken as the main research methodology by econometric panel data analysis and validation.The findings revealed four significant factors which strongly influenced on Thailand's agricultural international competitiveness;productivity,market share,export price and exchange rate.In term of international competitiveness,in order to enhance the export competitiveness of the nation,it is necessary to improve one nation's productivity and export market shares.Similarly,decrease of export price and depreciation of exchange rate could enhance on the export competitiveness of the nation.The main theoretical and practical contributions of this research are from a unique perspective of agricultural export performance to identify one country's export competitiveness.Theoretically,the international competitiveness of the nation is based on development of Thailand's international trade relevant existing literature to make more insight,particularly on Thailand's agricultural international competitiveness problems.In order to enhance Thailand's agriculture development and sustain Thai agricultural competitiveness,the author suggested that Thai economy need to improve competitiveness of agricultural products as well as to improve productivity of agricultural products,to reduce transaction costs,optimize agricultural export prices,to maintain exchange rate stability,improve the efficiency of international agricultural products and expand agricultural trade benefits to escalate Thai economy competitiveness.