**2. Methods**

For the moment, in Serbia and Romania, there is no Protected Designation of Origin/ Protected Geographical Indication certified honey, but there is a huge potential for developing this protection in the future. In the case of Romania, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development encourages the Protected Designation of Origin/Protected Geographical Indication honey certification and support this process by using the following arguments: the increase of value added of Romanian types of honey, the rise of consumer trust in the reliability of beekeepers who take care of the quality of honey, the creation of a balance between supply and demand by maintaining the quality, the facilitation of traceability and controls and the acceleration to attracting European Union funds [14]. Such strategies implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development could significantly contribute to the

In the case of Serbia, there is also a huge potential for Protected Designation of Origin/ Protected Geographical Indication certification of honey and other food products. An illustrative example is "Vlasina honey". A study about the attitudes of Vlasina honey producers towards geographical indications reveals that a small part of them know about this certification system, the results indicating the need for education and information in order to familiarise beekeepers with the procedure and the advantages of Protected Designation of Origin/ Protected Geographical Indication system [15]. "Vlasina honey" is on the list of local products supported by the European Union and the Government of Switzerland to receive technical assistance for the certification procedure. The specificity of "Vlasina honey" is given by the exceptional qualities of the region: the variety of medicinal plants and the clean environment. This type of honey is unique due to its flavour and therapeutic properties. The European recognition of "Vlasina honey" will increase the competitiveness of the beekeepers' association

At present, a very small quantity of honey produced in Serbia, Romania and Italy is Protected Designation of Origin/Protected Geographical Indication protected. Hence, a question arises: what other tools could be developed to measure the quality of honey produced in these three countries? The price of different types of honey could be a real barometer for evaluating the

Providing a good quantitative proxy able to describe honey quality is a hard task, as such concept and perception is heterogeneous across consumers. The widely used index to approach quality attributes of a food product is its unit value (price). It is worth remembering that price differences across products may be influenced (along with preferences for quality) by other factors, for instance, production costs and disposable income of consumers; nevertheless, price remains the most available datum that may be related to product quality, even if such correlation may be variable. In the case of honey, its quality is strictly related to product differentiation: the availability of different kind of honeys enlarges the choice set of consum-

The above-mentioned considerations on honey would suggest analysing and comparing price trends for a set of different kind of honey, over time and across the three countries examined. Such a comparison would allow grasping some insights on the relative quality of each honey examined, assuming some price-quality relationship. Unfortunately, this strategy cannot be

"Matica" and will open the opportunity to sell on international markets [16].

quality? Or the high demand for export of local honey demonstrates its value?

development of beekeeping sector.

6 Honey Analysis

ers, increasing their satisfaction.

In the following sections, we analysed the level and growth rate of honey production. An entire set of trade indicators related to honey were dynamically presented in the paper: value, amount, growth rate and geographic structure of export and import in the world, European Union and selected countries. The authors also measured the level of comparative advantages of exported honey from the selected countries by using the Balassa index. Research included a 10-year period. For this purpose, there were used data from Faostat, UN Comtrade and ITC (0409 product code), but also data provided by National Statistics Bodies.

The main body of our analysis deals with computation and comparison of the honey sector competitiveness in Serbia, Romania and Italy, to measure the comparative advantage of the honey export. The existence and extent of correlations among trade indexes is also performed. The basic concept of comparative advantage was erected in 1965 and the original Balassa model is given in Ref. [17]:

$$\mathbf{B} = \frac{\frac{X\_{\boldsymbol{\psi}}}{\overline{X\_{\boldsymbol{u}}}}}{\overline{X\_{\boldsymbol{u}}}} \, \tag{1}$$

where *X***ij** is export of product *j* (honey in this case) from countries (Serbia, Romania and Italy, in this analysis); *X***it** is total export of Serbia, Romania and Italy; *X***nj** is total export of honey from world and *X***nt** is total export of the world. For values *B* > 1, the comparative advantage in honey export of the country examined is revealed. In other words, there is comparative advantage in honey export by the country when the share of honey exported on total export of the country (*Xij*/*Xit*) is bigger than the share of honey world export on total world export (*Xnj*/*Xnt*). Ref. [18] made the correction of the index of comparative advantage and he presented it as relative trade advantage (RTA). Relative trade advantage (RTA) stands for the difference between the relative advantages of export (RXA) and the relative merits of import (RMA).

$$\text{RTA} = \text{RXA} \text{ - RMA}\_{\text{\textquotedblleft}} \tag{2}$$

$$RXA = \begin{array}{c} \end{array} \tag{3}$$

$$\text{RMA} = \frac{\frac{M\_y}{M\_u}}{\frac{M\_u}{M\_u}} \tag{4}$$

where *Mij* is import of honey from Serbia, Romania and Italy, *Mit* is total import from Serbia, Romania and Italy, *Mnj* is total import of honey from the world and *Mnt* is total import from world. The interpretation of the relative import advantage index is symmetrical with respect to the relative advantages of export (or B) Index: the country examined is relatively more "vulnerable" to honey import (compared to its entire economy) when the share of honey imported on total import of the country (*Mij*/*Mit*) is bigger than the share of honey world import on total world import (*Mnj*/*Mnt*). Calculating more accurate comparative advantages, Ref. [18] has created another index as the natural logarithm (ln) of the relative advantages of exports and imports (ln RXA and ln RMA). The difference obtained between the relative advantages of exports and imports is the revealed competitiveness (RC) and is expressed as:

$$RC = \text{InRXA - InRMA} \tag{5}$$

From the above-mentioned formula, Refs. [19, 20], has developed the following, to calculate the explicit comparative advantage:

$$\text{RCA} = \ln\left[\frac{X\_i}{M\_i}\right] \times \left[\sum\_{i=1}^{n} X\_i + \sum\_{i=1}^{n} M\_i\right] \times 100\_i$$

where *X* is the value of export, *M* is value of import, index *i* presents honey sector.
