 Are EU standards detrimental to Africa’s exports?Fatima Kareem and Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso Journal of Policy Modeling, 2020, vol. 42, issue 5, 1022-1037 Abstract: The high costs of complying with standards adversely affect export competitiveness. Existing evidence suggests that the harmonisation of standards to international benchmarks reduces compliance costs and is less trade-inhibiting, or may even be trade-promoting. This paper thus investigates how the regulatory margin in food standards affects Africa’s fish exports to the EU. We measure the regulatory margin in standards by comparing EU standards to the international scientifically-formulated benchmarks. Our results indicate that, relative to the international standards, EU fish standards are indeed non-inhibiting. Thus, the high number of fish exports from Africa rejected by the EU due to non-compliance with EU standards does not really suggest that the measures are overly restrictive but rather is an indication of the poor quality of Africa’s fish exports. This finding suggests a need for upgrades to Africa’s fish export quality, especially the fish supply chain infrastructure, through continuous improvements in fish export logistics facilitation and export promotion measures. Keywords: Food standards; Regulatory margin; Exports; European Union; Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jpolmo:v:42:y:2020:i:5:p:1022-1037 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpolmod.2020.04.006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Policy Modeling is currently edited by A. M. Costa More articles in Journal of Policy Modeling from Elsevier |
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