Quality Regulation Creates and Reallocates Trade

Lucas Zavala, Ana Fernandes, Ryan Haygood, Tristan Reed and Daniel Reyes

No 10601, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Quality regulations imposing minimum product standards have become a central instrument of trade policy. Using disaggregated panel data from middle-income countries, the authors show that sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT) measures increase trade on average, consistent with improved consumer information and contrary to their depiction as “non-tariff barriers”. However, their distributional effects differ. SPS measures reallocate trade toward higher-income countries, whereas TBT measures favor lower-income countries. Both increase sales concentration among exporters from lower-income countries only. The evidence indicates that the costs of quality regulation are primarily borne by exporting firms, especially those from lower-income countries.

Date: 2023-11-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/0998300 ... 16d-12df71a0d969.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (https://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099830011092318128/pdf/IDU-24f2b107-def5-4072-b16d-12df71a0d969.pdf [302 Found]--> http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099830011092318128/pdf/IDU-24f2b107-def5-4072-b16d-12df71a0d969.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099830011092318128/pdf/IDU-24f2b107-def5-4072-b16d-12df71a0d969.pdf)

Related works:
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:wbk:wbrwps:10601

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().