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Trade and the Political Economy of Food Standards
Author(s) -
Swinnen Johan F. M.,
Vandemoortele Thijs
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of agricultural economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.157
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1477-9552
pISSN - 0021-857X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1477-9552.2011.00294.x
Subject(s) - protectionism , politics , economics , outcome (game theory) , international political economy , set (abstract data type) , american political science , political economy , international trade , political science , microeconomics , law , programming language , computer science
This article presents a political economy model of public standards in an open economy. We use the model to derive the political optimum and to analyse different factors that have an influence on this political equilibrium. We analyse the relationship between trade and the political equilibria and compare the political outcome with the social optimum to identify under which cases political considerations lead to standards being set ‘too low’ or ‘too high’, and which standards could be labelled as protectionist measures.