Productive specialization in Romanian farms using Moran's Index

As a consequence of communism regime collapse, Romania has changed in a quickly and intense way the transformation of its socio-economic and productive fabric in order to become a new member of the European Union. The growth of Romanian Gross Domestic Product has acted on the increase of food consumption, on the implementation of agri-food sector and on the level of farmer's income even if one of the main negative bottleneck is the out migration from the countryside. Our research focuses on the evolution since 2000 to 2014 in Romanian territorial specialization aimed at estimating by a quantitative approach main nexus between growth of Gross Domestic Product and increase of agricultural production, in terms of agricultural GDP, with positive impacts on the agri-food chain. The Moran’s index has been a pivotal quantitative approach in order to estimate the spatial autocorrelation in all Romanian administrative provinces or counties between the variable Gross Domestic Product and the level of agrarian GDP and rural out migration. Findings have pointed out a dichotomy between the north and south Romanian regions as a consequence of the productive specialization, in general characterised by a high level of cropping specialization and by a poor farm size which is not able to create a consolidated agri-food supply chain.