The role of logistics in promoting Italian agribusiness: The Belt and Road Initiative case study

The increasing policy interest in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has stimulated an interesting debate in the research community. Although there are numerous studies focusing on this issue, in literature little attention has been devoted to the impact of the initiative on the performances of Italian firms involved in agribusiness. In order to bridge this gap, this paper focuses on wine as a high-quality commodity exported all over the world and considered an epitome of Made in Italy. Furthermore, ports of Venice and Trieste was selected for the analyses as being part of BRI agreements. This study highlights that the BRI project may modify land use planning as a consequence of the policymakers' choosing a specific port to serve as the Italian connection to the BRI. The heterogeneity that might influence regional data needs the usage of specific approaches (the order-alpha and order m) to evaluate the firms' efficiency as a consequence of two different links to the ports of Trieste and Venice. The authors attempt to perform this investigation considering the predicted effects of the BRI, and several different databases are used to examine these potential effects. The evaluation of accessibility in terms of distance and transport time could provide helpful details to policymakers when looking at different BRI alternatives. To achieve the analysis, the authors also consider dimensions connected to specific financial statements and labour, environmental and business innovation indicators. The results reveal that, when the scenario involves a specific port, some differences appear in the ranking of firms. The findings also show that the spatial effect connected to the choice of a specific port decreases for small firms. Since the Italian agribusiness sector - specifically the wine sector - is characterized by a prevalence of small and/or family firms, it is recommended that policymakers deal with the conclusions of present research to compare different BRI options from a land use point of view.