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Food Safety Standards and Quality Upgrading through Import Competition

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  • Eum, Jihyun

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of tariffs and non-tariff measures on efforts to upgrade product quality. Following conventional approaches to quality measurement, we examine disaggregated data covering the European Union's food imports from 159 trading partners from 1995 to 2003 across 28 food industries. Food product import tariffs and non-tariff measures are found to affect the rate of quality upgrading. Furthermore, we find the effect of import standard enforcement on quality upgrading to be non-monotonic, in that the products close to the world technology frontier are more likely to upgrade, while those distant from the frontier are less likely to upgrade.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:aaea16:235518
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235518
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

    Agricultural and Food Policy; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; International Relations/Trade;
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