Investment Opportunities for the Shrimp Processing Industry in the Philippines: Results from a Hedonic Analysis

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The Philippine shrimp industry is beset with production problems arising from disease infestation. With declining production and low per capita consumption, this paper sees the opportunities from value-adding, either by enhancing the shrimp product attributes desired by domestic consumers or from reducing or eliminating the unwanted attributes. This paper used a comparative-statics analysis to estimate economic returns that form the basis for suggesting investment opportunities for the shrimp processing industry. The estimation of economic surplus applied hedonic prices of product characteristics obtained from a previous study. The range of producer and consumer gains suggests that there are broadly three groups of value-adding processes.