SP A3: Standards and Agricultural Trade Flows

The increasing role of food standards in international trade is well recognized in the literature. Standards constitute an interesting case for trade analysis, because they may be trade-facilitating (providing better information to consumers, opening new markets etc.) or trade-impeding (constituting an additional non-tariff barrier). For instance, strict standards might severely damage export prospects for developing countries. Gravity models are typically used to evaluate the empirical role that standards exert on trade flows. However, most of the estimated gravity models in the agricultural economics literature show scope for improvement, especially in two areas, namely in the way standards are represented in the model and in terms of the econometric estimation techniques. These aspects are addressed in Subproject A3, mostly building on secondary data sets.

Topics of doctoral research:

Disentangling the gross impact of standards on trade: the case of technical regulations in high-value food exports
Private standards as catalysts versus private standards as barriers: the role of the specific supply chain stage
Econometric methods for modeling high-value agricultural exports

Doctoral researchers involved:

Doctoral researchers of the first cohort:
Amjad Masood
Fatima Kareem

Doctoral researchers of the second cohort:
Malte Ehrich
Marwan Benali

Doctoral researchers of the third cohort:
Dela-Dem Doe Fiankor
Nina Grassnick

Principal investigators/supervisors:
Bernhard Brümmer