During 2020 the COVID-19 crisis created a sizeable drop in aggregate trade flows for many industries and countries worldwide. A t the same time the total volume of seafood exports from Norway increased by 2 per cent in 2020, while the value was down by only 1 per cent, compared with the record year of 2019. In 2020 the export value of salmon from Norway, the world’s leading producer of salmon, was the second highest ever, and in t erms of volume 2020 was a record year . As the Norwegian aquaculture industry better tackles capacity problems, controls lice- and disease problems in the production, the industry is anticipated to have a high potential for future growth. A significant share of future production is expected to be exported to foreign markets demanding high quality nutritious products. Understanding the microeconomic mechanisms driving the evolution of aggregate exports is key to the comprehension of the aquaculture industry’s reaction to the pandemi c as well as to provide knowledge on how to tackle future crisis.
This paper studies h ow the extensive and intensive margin of exports of aquaculture products was impacted by the pandemic. We utilize highly disaggregated firm-level data for export o f aquaculture products from Norway. Export value of different aquaculture products are decomposed into different elements of the extensive and intensive margins of trade such as the number of exporters to a market, the number of importers, average unit value and average volume. Of particular interest is heterogeneity of adjustments of trade margins along the size distribution of exporters.
Our results show that the extensive margin of trade in general was more responsive to the pandemic than the intensive margin of trade. During 2020 the number of exporters dropped compared to 2019. T he average export value per exporter was higher during the first months of the pandemic than in the corresponding months of 2019 but fell below the 2019-level by the end of the year. We document that the top exporters tackled the crisis best in terms of maintaining overall sales.