Product standards and margins of trade: Firm level evidence

Lionel Fontagné, Gianluca Orefice, Roberta Piermartini and Nadia Rocha

No ERSD-2013-04, WTO Staff Working Papers from World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division

Abstract: This paper analyses the trade effects of restrictive product standards on the margins of trade for a large panel of French firms. To focus on restrictive product standards only, we use a new database compiling the list of measures that have been raised as concerns in dedicated committees of the WTO. We restrict our analysis to the subset of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) regulatory measures and analyse the effects of product standards on three variables: (i) probability to export and to exit the export market (firm-product extensive margins), (ii) value exported (firm-product intensive margin) and (iii) export prices. In particular we study whether firms size, market shares and export orientation modify the effect of SPS measures. We find that SPS measures discourage exports. We also find a negative effect of SPS imposition on the intensive margins of trade. Finally, the negative effects of SPS measures on the extensive and intensive margins of trade are attenuated for big firms.

Keywords: International trade; firm heterogeneity; multi-product exporters; non-tariff barriers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Product standards and margins of trade: Firm-level evidence (2015)
Working Paper: Product Standards and Margins of Trade: Firm Level Evidence (2013)
Working Paper: Product Standards and Margins of Trade: Firm Level Evidence (2013)
Working Paper: Product standards and margins of trade: Firm level evidence (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wtowps:ersd201304

DOI: 10.30875/6ea0a31b-en

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