Abstract

The present paper surveys the production volatility of the virgin olive oil in Mediterranean countries. European Union (EU) is the leading world producer and consequently the survey of its volatility attracts great interest. Especially, countries in the Mediterranean basin are the substantial producers of this crop and provide them with a comparative and competitive advantage in international markets. In addition, the virgin olive oil is a major source of income and employment for the aforementioned countries. Entropy has been used in the study of the time series analysis. The results confirmed a strong positive correlation between the entropy and both forms of the standard deviation. In addition, the virgin olive oil production is quantified with the assistance of ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) models. The estimation of ARIMA model for every country was found to provide the policy makers with a useful intervention tool for the virgin olive oil production.

Key words: Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models, comparative analysis, EU, virgin olive oil.