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Trade barriers or trade facilitators? The heterogeneous impact of food standards in international trade
Author(s) -
Medin Hege
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.594
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1467-9701
pISSN - 0378-5920
DOI - 10.1111/twec.12756
Subject(s) - international trade , technical barriers to trade , norwegian , economics , food safety , international economics , trade barrier , quality (philosophy) , phytosanitary certification , business , food science , economic growth , biology , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology
Recent research shows that the effect of food standards can be heterogeneous across sectors or countries: they sometimes act as barriers to trade, but in other cases may lead to increased trade. I present empirical evidence on Norwegian seafood exports showing that foreign food standards, measured by sanitary and phytosanitary notifications to the WTO , generally have a negative impact on total exports, the number of exporters and their average exports. However, for fresh seafood, there is a positive counteracting effect. I present a theoretical explanation for this, suggesting that food standards reduce consumer uncertainty about quality and safety and therefore increase demand.

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