Assessing the effects of seasonal tariff-rate quotas on vegetable prices in Switzerland

Daria Loginova, Marco Portmann and Martin Huber

No 521, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: Causal estimation of the short-term effects of tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on vegetable producer prices is hampered by the large variety and different growing seasons of vegetables and is therefore rarely performed. We quantify the effects of Swiss seasonal TRQs on domestic producer prices of a variety of vegetables based on a difference-in-differences estimation using a novel dataset of weekly producer prices for Switzerland and neighbouring countries. We find that TRQs increase prices of most vegetables by more than 20% above the prices in neighbouring countries during the main harvest time for most vegetables and even more than 50% for some vegetables. The effects are stronger for more perishable vegetables and for conventionally produced ones compared with organic vegetables. However, we do not find clear-cut effects of TRQs on the week-to-week price volatility of vegetables although the overall lower price volatility in Switzerland compared with neighbouring countries might be a result of the TRQ system in place.

Keywords: agricultural trade policies; price volatility; Swiss agriculture; seasonal production; vegetable production; price stability; stabilisation policies; tariff-rate quotas; difference-indifferences; inverse probability weighting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: P52 Q02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2021-02-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-eur and nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Assessing the Effects of Seasonal Tariff‐rate Quotas on Vegetable Prices in Switzerland (2021)
Working Paper: Assessing the effects of seasonal tariff-rate quotas on vegetable prices in Switzerland (2020)
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