Abstract

The well-known “factor endowment hypothesis (FEH)” implies that countries with higher scarcity in land and/or water intend to import more land-intensive and/or water-intensive goods. To more effectively test this important hypothesis, we first adopted recently available scarcity indices of land and water in the literature to distinguish scarce land and water from neutral or abundant land and water. We then incorporated land and water scarcity into multi-regional input-output analysis to quantify virtual land and water flows embodied in food trade among 140 countries/regions in 2011. The results show that while the major net exporters of virtual scarce-land are land-abundant countries, which supports the FEH, the major net exporters of virtual scarce-water were water-scarce countries, which does not support the FEH. This finding suggests that the current market forces reflect the scarcity of land resources, but does not reflect the water scarcity in the context of international trade. The reasons sustaining this distinction was discussed.

Presenter Profile

Laixiang Sun is a Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences, UMD. He was previously the Chair Professor and Head of Department at Department of Financial and Management Studies in SOAS University of London. He was awarded the title “Fellow (Academician) of the Academy of Social Sciences” (www.acss.org.uk) in February 2010. He is a research professor at Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR) in China Academy of Sciences. He is affiliated with Guanghua School of Management in Peking University, Beijing, China, and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. He has produced more than 150 research publications in regional sciences and regional economics, environmental sciences and management, business and management studies, integrated modelling, and ecological economics. He has been a principal investigator or leading scientist in more than 30 research projects sponsored by the European Commission; NASA in the USA; British Academy, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society, ESRC, EPSRC, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), and Met Office in the UK; Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Sciences Foundation, and Ministry of Education in China. He has taught more than 20 different courses in universities in China, the Netherlands, Finland, the UK, and the USA spanning from systems analysis, economics, econometrics, calculus to corporate governance, international business studies, and urban geography.