The difference in development level of marine shellfish industry in 10 major producing countries

Abstract Using the production and trade data of marine shellfish extracted from the database of FishStatJ, this study aims to i) measure development level (DL) of the marine shellfish industry (MSI) in 10 major producing countries by the TOPSIS model; ii) classify the MSI into different classes in term of the results from the above measurement; and iii) identify, by the variation coefficient, how DL of the MSI in the 10 countries was changing during the period of 1997–2016. The results of the TOSIS analysis indicate that, by the relative closeness and the number of turning points, the 10 countries can be divided into three types, i.e., with no change (China and Thailand); with little change and in a gradual way (Japan, Canada, France, Spain and Italy); and with a dramatical change (USA, Chile and South Korea). In term of the mean of relative closeness, the 10 countries can be divided into four classes, i.e., excellent (class I), good (class II), weak (class III), and poor (class IV), with China being in class I, USA, Japan and Canada in class II, France, Chile, Spain and South Korea in class III, and Italy and Thailand in class IV. The results of the variation coefficient analysis suggest that the difference in DL of the 10 countries’ MSI increased over the past 20 years. In particular, the difference among the developing countries increased significantly, while those between the developed countries shrank slightly.