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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe effect of food standards on agricultural trade flows remains unclear. We contribute to the debate with a unique dataset that contains the number of food processing firms of 88 countries from 2008 to 2013 that are certified with the International Featured Standard (IFS). Based on a theoretical framework that combines Melitz-type firm heterogeneity with quality upgrading, we estimate a gravity-model using the one-year lag of IFS as well as modern grocery distribution as an instrument to address potential endogeneity. We find that IFS increases c.p. bilateral exports on average of seven agricultural product categories in both specifications. However, the effect remains only for upper-and middle-income countries once we separate by income and turns even negative for low income countries in the IV-specification. Hence, whereas IFS increases exports on average, it has a trade-impeding effect for low-income countries. Therefore, private standards are not a sufficient development policy tool to integrate low-income countries to the world trading system without being accompanied by other measures.

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Using a new database on standards in China, we estimate the impact of voluntary and mandatory standards -either harmonized to international norms or purely domestic -on Chinese food exports. The dataset covers seven Chinese products over the period 1992-2008. We find that standards have a positive effect on China's export performance, as the benefits to standardization in terms of reducing potential information asymmetry and signaling enhance food safety, and quality in foreign markets seem to surpass compliance costs. Our estimation results show that the positive effect of Chinese standards is larger when they are harmonized to international measures. The results suggest that there are clear benefits to China's steps to base their domestic standards and regulations on international measures.