Do Standards Improve the Quality of Traded Products?

Carl Gaigne, Anne-Célia Disdier and Cristina Herghelegiu

No 21-11, Working Papers SMART from INRAE UMR SMART

Abstract: We examine whether standards raise the quality of traded products by correcting market failures associated with information asymmetry on product attributes. Matching a panel of French firm-product-destination export data with a dataset on sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBTs), we find that such quality standards enforced on products by destination countries: (i) favor the export probability of high-quality firms provided that their productivity is high enough; (ii) raise the export sales of high-productivity high-quality firms at the expense of low-productivity and low-quality firms; (iii) improve the average quality of consumption goods exported by France. We then develop a simple new trade model under uncertainty about product quality, in which heterogeneous firms can strategically invest in quality signaling, to rationalize these empirical results on quality and selection effects.

Keywords: firm exports; quality standards; information asymmetry; product quality; heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D22 F12 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-bec and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/319672 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Do standards improve the quality of traded products? (2023)
Working Paper: Do standards improve the quality of traded products? (2023)
Working Paper: Do standards improve the quality of traded products? (2023)
Working Paper: Do Standards Improve the Quality of Traded Products? (2021)
Working Paper: Do Standards Improve the Quality of Traded Products? (2021)
Working Paper: Do Standards Improve the Quality of Traded Products? (2020)
Working Paper: Do Standards Improve the Quality of Traded Products? (2018)
Working Paper: Do Standards Improve the Quality of Traded Products? (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rae:wpaper:202111

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers SMART from INRAE UMR SMART Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anne Chauvel ().