North-South Standards Harmonization and International Trade

By Anne‐Célia Disdier, Lionel Fontagné, Olivier Cadot. 2013

125 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent years have seen a surge in economic integration agreements (EIAs) and the development of non-tariff measures (NTMs). As a consequence, a growing number of EIAs include provisions on NTMs. However, little attention has been given in the literature to the effects of NTM liberalization in the context of EIAs. In this paper, we focus on provisions for technical regulations and analyze whether the North-South harmonization of technical barriers affects international trade. Using a gravity equation, we test whether, as a result of the deep integration associated with standards provisions included in the EIA, the Southern partners' trade expands with the North, but at the expense of their trade with non-bloc Southern partners. Empirical results provide strong support for this conjecture. Moreover, harmonization on the basis of regional standards negatively impacts the exports of developing countries to the North.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8a93554e6ab405dbce202368add584b5d3021009

How researchers see this paper

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. M. Maertens
2. Jo Swinnen
3. John C. Beghin
4. T. Reardon
5. F. Santeramo
6. M. Qaim
7. E. Lamonaca
8. Lars J. Olson

In Political Science and International Relations

1. Jo Swinnen
2. M. Maertens
3. John C. Beghin

In Strategy and Management

1. M. Maertens
2. Jo Swinnen
3. John C. Beghin
4. M. Qaim

Citations in the corpus

• Non-Tariff Measures and Standards in Trade and Global Value Chains (2015, background): “These measures are not bilateral and often do not reflect NTM integration (Disdier et al., 2014).”