Assessing the Effects of Seasonal Tariff‐rate Quotas on Vegetable Prices in Switzerland

Abstract

Causal estimation of the short-term effects of tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) on vegetable producer prices is hampered by the large variety and different growing seasons of vegetables and is therefore rarely performed. We quantify the effects of Swiss seasonal TRQs on domestic producer prices of a variety of vegetables based on a difference-in-differences estimation using a novel dataset of weekly producer prices for Switzerland and neighbouring countries. We find that TRQs increase prices of most vegetables by more than 20% above the prices in neighbouring countries during the main harvest time for most vegetables and even more than 50% for some vegetables. The effects are stronger for more perishable vegetables and for conventionally produced ones compared with organic vegetables. However, we do not find clear-cut effects of TRQs on the week-to-week price volatility of vegetables although the overall lower price volatility in Switzerland compared with neighbouring countries might be a result of the TRQ system in place.

Assessing the Short-term Effect of Exchange Rate Liberalisation on Food Import Prices: The Regression Discontinuity in Time Employed for Russian Food Markets in 2014

“…The exchange rate liberalisation in Russia in 2014 was introduced on a Saturday, so issues regarding midweek policy activations (e.g. [54] ) could be avoided. The described data processing allowed the collection of the minimum number of observations around the cut-off to meet the identifiability and positivity assumptions.…”

“…A mass treatment effect of exchange rate liberalisation on trade withdraws the opportunity to find untreated import flows for difference-in-differences e . The regression discontinuity design appears to be useful for policy effect estimation (see the examples in [53,54] ) in the mentioned conditions, as it entails local regression, which requires the available data for Russian markets. The RDD was developed for individual data and requires adoption to study prices in time.…”

Measuring stability and structural breaks: Applications in social sciences

“…Data of higher frequency is required if changes occur within the period or aggregation level of one observation. This is particularly the case when analyzing season‐sensitive policies (e.g., Loginova et al., 2021). Usually, the higher the selected frequency, the narrower are the confidence intervals for estimations.…”

“…The change in a number of observations may help fulfil the common trend assumption; however, if the estimated effects and their significance differ largely with the introduction of a couple of new observations, robustness of the model is failed. A time of structural break is sometimes excluded from data to avoid the influence of the transition period on the estimates (e.g., Loginova et al., 2021). Propensity score matching allows pairing observations from treated and control groups by similar values of characteristics (see the discussion in Caliendo & Kopeinig, 2008).…”

A Bibliometric Analysis of Literature on Vegetable Prices at Domestic and International Markets—A Knowledge Graph Approach

“…Santos et al, (2015) focus on the maximization of vegetable farmers' income, and the study finds that it makes full use of the diverse harvesting period and productivity of crops and rotates different vegetable varieties to increase income [26]. Scholars have found that the GATT has an impact on EU fruit and vegetable policies [27], and then found that seasonal tariff quotas have led to fluctuations in vegetable prices [28]. Therefore, different import and export systems will directly affect the entry of vegetables into the market [29].…”