Effects Of Agri-food Standards On International Trade

Due to the establishment of WTO,import quota was cancelled and tariff has been greatly reduced.Governments of WTO members then turn to other non-tariff measures to influence international trade,among which is product standard.These standards especially those about food and agricultural products are perceived as a disguised protectionism and actually a barrier to international trade.However,is the conventional wisdom right? The paper tries to answer the question and shows that agri-food standards in international food and agricultural markets can have significant effects on trade flow and dual-margins.The paper is structured as follows.In Chapter 1,the research background,content and objectives,research methods and so on are presented.Chapter 2 is the literature review part.In this part,relevant researches done by Chinese and foreign scholars are analyzed and summarized,especially in three fields,namely,researched about measurement of standards,about trade effects of standards and about the most important model used to analyze standards,the gravity model.In Chapter 3,the current situation about agri-food standards is described.This chapter begins with the concept and classification of agri-food standards.Then SPS and TBT agreements of WTO are analyzed to make a basis for the following empirical study part,in which SPS measures are taken as agri-food standards of members of WTO.Also the analysis about SPS and TBT is made for the policy suggestion part in the last chapter.And also in Chapter3,three different system of agri-food standards of China,USA and EU are compared in order to find the disadvantages of the current system of China and make advice for Chinese policy makers.Chapter 4 focuses on empirical study of economic effects of agri-food standards.In this chapter,new institutional economy and game theory in the framework of product vertical differentiation are applied to analyze economic and trade effects of product standards.As a social institution,product standards emerged and become popular because of several reasons.For example,information asymmetry and negative externality are two key reasons for the existence of product standards.And the game model developed in Chapter 4 shows product standards implemented by importing governments will not be barrier to international trade if the product standards are elaborately designed.In Chapter 5 and Chapter 6,the empirical predictions of Chapter 4 are tested.In Chapter 5,SPS measures are taken as agri-food standards of members of WTO and the effects of SPS measures of both importing and exporting countries on trade flow and dual-margins are analyzed.And it is shown that whether or not there is a SPS measure being implemented in importing country?region? or exporting country?region?,it is beneficial to trade flow and extensive margin.But if too many SPS measures are applied in importing country?region?,trade will be negatively affected.In Chapter 5,a multi-country?region? gravity model is applied.While in Chapter 6,China is the only research sample and ten agri-food products are chosen to be studied.Heckman sample selection model is applied to analyze the trade effect of different types of standards,in this paper,namely,country?region?-specific standards and international harmonized standards.The conclusion is that country?region?-specific standards of China have positive effect on Chinese agri-food trade with its partners,while international harmonized standards have negative effect.In Chapter 7 also the last chapter,conclusions of this research and policy advices are presented.It is true that agri-food standards can be used as disguised protectionism.However,it cannot be taken for granted that agri-food standards are equal to trade barriers.Empirical study in this paper has proved that agri-food standards will not do harm to international trade,which also testify the empirical prediction in Chapter 4.In the second part of Chapter 7,some policy advices for Chinese government are given.At a policy level,the conclusions of this research highlight the importance of realizing the nature and importance of building an agri-food standards system and taking a proper attitude towards foreign and international standards.