IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wii/wpaper/195.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Exploring ‘Non-Tariff Measures Black Box’: Whose Regulative NTMs on Which Products Improve the Imported Quality?

Author

Listed:
  • Mahdi Ghodsi

    (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw)

Abstract

Regulative non-tariff measures (NTMs), such as technical barriers to trade (TBTs) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, have frequently been imposed to regulate the quality of imported goods when the market fails to address some issues of concern regarding harmful products with low standards. The impact of NTMs on trade values and trade volumes has been extensively modelled and analysed in the literature, while their quality impact has usually been studied using the unit values of imports. In this paper a monopolistic competition framework is presented, in which firms choose both the quality and the price of their exports subject to the compliance costs of NTMs behind the border and a fixed cost of technological change. Using the solutions of this model including NTMs, the quality of products at the six-digit level of the harmonised system (HS) traded globally and bilaterally during the period 1996–2017 is estimated. Using these estimates, the impacts of TBTs and SPS measures on trade values, volume, unit value and quality are estimated. On average and across all global bilateral trade, TBTs restrict imports while improving quality significantly. SPS measures stimulate trade and improve the average imported quality. Then, by estimating the importer-specific impact of NTMs on traded value, quantity, unit value, quality, and quality-adjusted price for each product, the ‘NTM Black Box’ is opened and analysed. This provides evidence of whether the quality of traded goods to an importing country has been upgraded despite the trade restrictiveness of NTMs. The complete analysed data that are available in the online appendix and visualised on Tableau will provide insights to scholars, policymakers and trade-dispute settlement cases at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). wiiw

Suggested Citation

  • Mahdi Ghodsi, 2021. "Exploring ‘Non-Tariff Measures Black Box’: Whose Regulative NTMs on Which Products Improve the Imported Quality?," wiiw Working Papers 195, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    • Handle: RePEc:wii:wpaper:195
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://wiiw.ac.at/exploring-non-tariff-measures-black-box--whose-regulative-ntms-on-which-products-improve-the-imported-quality-dlp-5599.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hiau LooiKee & Alessandro Nicita & Marcelo Olarreaga, 2009. "Estimating Trade Restrictiveness Indices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(534), pages 172-199, January.
    2. Guannan Miao & Fabienne Fortanier, 2017. "Estimating Transport and Insurance Costs of International Trade," OECD Statistics Working Papers 2017/4, OECD Publishing.
    3. Krugman, Paul, 1980. "Scale Economies, Product Differentiation, and the Pattern of Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 950-959, December.
    4. Yuan Li & John C. Beghin, 2017. "A meta-analysis of estimates of the impact of technical barriers to trade," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: John Christopher Beghin (ed.), Nontariff Measures and International Trade, chapter 4, pages 63-77, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Amit Khandelwal, 2010. "The Long and Short (of) Quality Ladders," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1450-1476.
    6. Krugman, Paul R., 1979. "Increasing returns, monopolistic competition, and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 469-479, November.
    7. Chang Liu & Dongtao Lin & Jiawei Liu & Yanran Li, 2019. "Quantifying the effects of non-tariff measures on African agri-food exporters," Agrekon, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 58(4), pages 451-471, October.
    8. Mike Webb & Anna Strutt & John Gibson & Terrie Walmsley, 2020. "Modelling the impact of non‐tariff measures on supply chains in ASEAN," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(8), pages 2172-2198, August.
    9. Eyal RONEN, 2017. "Quantifying the trade effects of NTMs: A review of the empirical literature," Journal of Economics and Political Economy, KSP Journals, vol. 4(3), pages 263-274, September.
    10. Zhaohui Niu & Chang Liu & Saileshsingh Gunessee & Chris Milner, 2018. "Non-tariff and overall protection: evidence across countries and over time," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 154(4), pages 675-703, November.
    11. Krugman, Paul R, 1981. "Intraindustry Specialization and the Gains from Trade," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 959-973, October.
    12. Singh, Rahul & Chanda, Rupa, 2021. "Technical regulations, intermediate inputs, and performance of firms: Evidence from India," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    13. Peter K. Schott, 2004. "Across-Product Versus Within-Product Specialization in International Trade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 647-678.
    14. Ayoub Yousefi & Mengyi Liu, 2013. "The Impact of Technical Barriers to Trade: The Cases of Trade Between China, Japan, Korea, and the US," Contributions to Economics, in: Pang Chuan & Vasil Khachidze & Ivan K.W. Lai & Yide Liu & Sohail Siddiqui & Tim Wang (ed.), Innovation in the High-Tech Economy, edition 127, pages 23-34, Springer.
    15. Tsunehiro Otsuki & John S. Wilson, 2001. "What price precaution? European harmonisation of aflatoxin regulations and African groundnut exports," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 28(3), pages 263-284, October.
    16. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mahdi Ghodsi, 2023. "Salmonella Program in the European Union and the Trade Dispute with Brazil at the World Trade Organisation: a Partial Equilibrium Framework," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 131(1), pages 167-212.
    2. Payam Elhami & Mahdi Ghodsi & Robert Stehrer, 2021. "Quality of Goods Imports: Which Role for Non-tariff Measures?," wiiw Policy Notes 46, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    3. Mahdi Ghodsi, 2021. "Impact of Technical Barriers to Trade on the Trade in Goods in the Information and Communications Technology Sector: Differentiating by Aim of the Regulatory Measure," wiiw Working Papers 208, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ghodsi, Mahdi, 2023. "Exploring the ‘non-tariff measures black box’: Whose regulatory NTMs on which products improve the imported quality?," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 45-67.
    2. Irfan Aleem & Bushra Faizi, 2021. "Non-tariff Measures, Overall Protection and Export Competitiveness: Evidence from Pakistan and Regional Countries," The Pakistan Development Review, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, vol. 60(3), pages 251-282.
    3. Jihyun Eum, 2018. "Upgrading Product Quality: The Impact of Tariffs and Standards," Working Papers 2018-10, Economic Research Institute, Bank of Korea.
    4. Mahdi Ghodsi, 2015. "The Role of Specific Trade Concerns Raised on TBTs in the Import of Products to the EU, USA and China," wiiw Working Papers 116, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    5. Bastos, Paulo & Silva, Joana, 2010. "The quality of a firm's exports: Where you export to matters," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 99-111, November.
    6. Aleksandra Parteka, 2013. "The evolving structure of Polish exports (1994−2010) – diversification of products and trade partners," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 44(5), pages 435-466.
    7. Kan Yue, 2022. "Non‐tariff measures, product quality and import demand," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(2), pages 870-900, April.
    8. Carlo Perroni & Davide Suverato, 2023. "Skills scarcity and export intensity," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(2), pages 719-757, May.
    9. Matthias Helble & Toshihiro Okubo, 2008. "Heterogeneous Quality Firms and Trade Costs," Discussion Paper Series 220, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    10. Bastos, Paulo & Silva, Joana, 2010. "Identifying vertically differentiated products," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 32-34, January.
    11. Eum, Jihyun, 2016. "Food Safety Standards and Quality Upgrading through Import Competition," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235518, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    12. Mahdi Ghodsi, 2023. "Regulatory Convergence within Technical Barriers to Trade," wiiw Working Papers 229, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    13. Olivier Cadot & Céline Carrère & Vanessa Strauss-Kahn, 2014. "OECD imports: diversification of suppliers and quality search," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 150(1), pages 1-24, February.
    14. Lugovskyy, Volodymyr & Skiba, Alexandre, 2016. "Positive and negative effects of distance on export prices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 155-181.
    15. Schetter, Ulrich, 2016. "Comparative Advantages with Product Complexity and Product Quality," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145933, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2022. "Markups, quality, and trade costs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    17. Charlotte Emlinger & Viola Lamani, 2020. "International trade, quality sorting and trade costs: the case of Cognac," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 156(3), pages 579-609, August.
    18. Redding, Stephen & Weinstein, David, 2017. "Aggregating From Micro to Macro Patterns of Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 12446, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2018. "Global Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 565-619, June.
    20. Curzi, Daniele & Raimondi, Valentina & Olper, Alessandro, 2013. "Quality Upgrading, Competition and Trade Policy: Evidence from the Agri-Food Sector," 2013: Productivity and Its Impacts on Global Trade, June 2-4, 2013. Seville, Spain 152386, International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    non-tariff measures; technical barriers to trade; sanitary and phytosanitary measures; quality of products; global bilateral trade;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wii:wpaper:195. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Customer service (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wiiwwat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.