Trade collapse, quality and food exports

This article revisits the so-called \u2018Collapse in Quality\u2019 hypothesis, according to which, during the 2008\u20132009 crisis, higher quality goods experienced a stronger export reduction compared to low-quality ones. Using disaggregated trade data from three European countries that traditionally export high-quality food products \u2013 France, Italy and Spain \u2013 we do not find any econometric evidence supporting this hypothesis. In contrast, we provide preliminary evidence for the concurrent hypothesis, namely that firms reduced their markup to preserve market shar

Do food standards affect the quality of EU imports?

This paper investigates the relationship between the diffusion of EU standards and product quality upgrading using highly disaggregated import data to the EU in the food industry. Results show that, on average, the diffusion of EU voluntary standards boosts the rate of quality upgrading. However, the results are heterogeneous when moving from primary to processed foods, and from ISO to non-ISO standard

The many pros and the few cons of noninvasive ventilation in ordinary wards

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GMO Regulations, International Trade and the Imperialism of Standards

This paper deals with the quantification of GMO regulations on bilateral trade flows. A composite index of the complexity of such regulations for sixty countries as well as an objective score for six GMO regulatory sub-dimensions has been developed. Using a gravity model, we show how bilateral similarity?in GMO regulations, affect trade flows for the composite index and its components. Results show that bilateral distance in GMO regulations negatively affect trade flows, especially as an effect of labeling policies, approval process and traceability systems. Interesting, the trade reduction effect induced by GMO standards increase by a factor of four when GMO regulations is treated as endogenous to trade flows. This pattern is consistent with an international environment where large importing countries dictate the rules of the game to developing countries

Revisiting the 'Cotton Problem': A Comparative Analysis of Cotton Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa

The cotton sector has been amongst the most regulated in Africa, and still is to a large extent in West and Central Africa (WCA), despite repeated refirm recommendations by international donors. On the other hand, orthodox refirms in East and Southern Africa (ESA) have not always yielded the expected results. This paper uses a stylised contracting model to investigate the link between market structure and equity and efficiency in sub-Saharan cotton sectors; explain the outcomes of refirms in ESA; and analyze the potential consequences of orthodox refirms in WCA. We argue that the level of the world price and of government intervention, the nature of pre-refirm institutional organisation, as well as the degree of parastatal inefficiency, all contribute to making refirms less attractive to firmers and governments in WCA today, as compared to ESA in the 1990s.We illustrate our arguments with empirical observations on the perfirmance of cotton sectors across sub-Saharan Africa

Trade, import competition and productivity growth in the food industry

Melitz and Ottaviano's (2008) firm-heterogeneity model predicts that trade liberalization induces a selection process from low to high productivity firms, which translates to an industry productivity growth. A similar firms' selection effect is induced by market size. In this paper, these predictions are tested across 25 European countries and 9 food industries, over the 1995-2008 period. Using different dynamic panel estimators we find strong support for the model predictions, namely that an increase in import penetration is systematically positively related to productivity growth. The results are robust to measurement issues in productivity, controlling for market size, country and sector heterogeneities, and for the endogeneity of import competition. Interestingly, this positive relationship is almost exclusively driven by competition in final products coming from developed (especially EU-15) countries suggesting that EU food imports are closer substitutes for domestic production than non-EU imports. These results have some potentially interesting policy implications