On the Evolution of Trade and Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards: The Role of Trade Agreements

Abstract

Trade agreements and trade measures are policy instruments thought to favour trade by providing a degree of harmonisation among members. We analyse how the agri-food trade and the incidence of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPSs) have evolved within countries sharing agreements. We examine, through a regression discontinuity design, whether the approval of agreements affects the evolution of trade and SPSs over time, and quantify the trade effects of SPSs. We also provide differences before and after the introduction of agreements, and among the most regulated agri-food products. Findings show that trade agreements tend to favour the increase of trade and the reduction of policy measures between members. However, regulation inequalities exist across trade agreements covering different geo-economic areas: after the approval of agreements, the existence and the importance of SPSs become relevant among developing countries, whereas the pervasiveness of SPSs becomes less stringent between developed and developing countries. Our analyses also prove that trade agreements and trade measures are trade-enhancing only at aggregate level: product-specific analyses show that cereal is the only sector that benefits from the joint influence of trade agreements and SPSs. The harmonisation of SPSs within agreements may be determinant in avoiding distortions in favour of members.

Effect of Quality Standards on the Performance of Agricultural Exports in Cameroon

“…Thus, the use of such a measure may bias the regression. To overcome the shortcomings of the previous approach, we use the method of quantifying quality standards called frequency measures [1,22,40,41,20,21]. This method aims to assess the number of regulations or the proportion of products subject to standards in a given product classification.…”

“…Henson and Jaffee, [17] show, however, that the best performing countries and/or sectors are most often those that have used high quality standards to position themselves in competitive global markets. Previous work has focused on the influence of standards on international trade in the African context [16,[18][19][20][21] (Legge et al, 2009). Legge et al (2009) report that the share of smallholders in Kenyan fruit and vegetable production for export has declined by more than half, mainly due to pressures to comply with quality standards.…”

“…Legge et al (2009) report that the share of smallholders in Kenyan fruit and vegetable production for export has declined by more than half, mainly due to pressures to comply with quality standards. Santeramo and Lamonaca [20,21] recently found that SPS compliance has sharply reduced (about 92%) the trade performance of the agribusiness sector in Africa. Despite the relevance of previous studies and to our knowledge, no study has so far been devoted to the impact of quality standards on the performance of agricultural exports in Cameroon.…”

China-Australia Trade Relations and China’s Barley Imports

“…In recent years, many scholars have studied the impact of trade policies. Adjustments of agricultural trade policies will affect global agricultural prices [7], trade structure [8], trade volume [9], social welfare [10], and related industrial structures [11].…”

On the impact of non-tariff measures on trade performances of the African agri-food sector

“…The importance of these issues is attested by an increasing number of related review articles, published in top journals, on the effects NTMs on global trade. Few reviews are quantitative (e.g., Li and Beghin, 2012;Santeramo and Lamonaca, 2019); the vast majority are qualitative (e.g., Beghin, Maertens, and Swinnen 2015), focused on specific categories of NTMs (e.g., Cipollina and Salvatici 2008) or on particular geographic areas (e.g., Salvatici, Matthews, and Scoppola 2017). Differently a review on the influence of NTMs on trade performances of African agri-food sector is currently lacking.…”