The influence of immigration and international tourism on the demand for imported food products

The role of immigration and international tourism in food product imports, as two factors which potentially influence the (trans-) formation of tastes in a country, is theoretically and empirically analysed. In using an econometric error-correction specification of an import demand function, the scale of the impact of these two factors is estimated for the case of Germany (annual data from 1967 to 1990). The results show that, while aggregate food import demand from India, Thailand, China and Turkey is inelastic with regard to migration to Germany and international travel activities of Germans to these destinations, the estimated average elasticities for imports of wine, cheese and processed/preserved vegetables from France and Italy are all well above unity, thus suggesting that immigration and international tourism may indeed affect the import demand for certain food products.

Keywords:

• cheese
• error-correction model
• Germany
• import demand
• processed/preserved vegetables
• wine

Notes

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