IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-03676587.html

Standards and political connections: Evidence from Tunisia

Author

Listed:
  • Hendrik Kruse

    (LEO - Laboratoire d'Économie d'Orleans [2021-2022] - UO - Université d'Orléans - UT - Université de Tours, University of Göttingen)

  • Inma Martínez-Zarzoso

    (University of Göttingen, Universitat Jaume I = Jaume I University)

  • Leila Baghdadi

    (Université de Tunis)

Abstract

In this paper we investigate whether trade liberalization leads to more stringent product standards in a developing country context, uncovering the role that the connected firms’ market share plays in markets dominated by imports. We estimate a two-part model using data over the period from 2002 to 2010 to test whether additional product standards emerge in sectors where politically connected firms have a higher market share. Our main results show that the mechanisms we anticipated are in fact at play in Tunisia. During the implementation period of the EU-Tunisia association agreement, we find that sectors with a higher import share of connected firms – linked to the Ben Ali family – tend to have a higher probability of an increasing number of technical barriers to trade. This result is robust to addressing endogeneity issues and to the introduction of dynamics into the model.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Hendrik Kruse & Inma Martínez-Zarzoso & Leila Baghdadi, 2021. "Standards and political connections: Evidence from Tunisia," Post-Print hal-03676587, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03676587
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102731
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yushen Du & Hongli Bao & Fan Zhang, 2025. "RETRACTED ARTICLE: Strategizing Enterprise Dominance in Standards Associations: The Power of Relational Capital and Market Dynamics," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 16(1), pages 501-532, March.
    2. Calì, Massimiliano & Graciano, Simón Caicedo & Ghose, Devaki & Montfaucon, Angella Faith & Ruta, Michele, 2026. "Trade policy and exporters’ resilience: Evidence from Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    3. Xuejun Wang & Huiying Zhou & Dongmei Su, 2022. "Does the internationalisation of China's agri‐food standards affect export quality upgrading?—Evidence from firm‐product‐level data," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 66(4), pages 887-911, October.
    4. Dai, Min & Ye, Yongwei, 2025. "Hometown favoritism and intra-regional trade barriers under decentralization: Evidence from China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 235(C).
    5. Jones, Sam & Schilling, Felix & Tarp, Finn, 2026. "Politicians doing business: Evidence from Mozambique," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    6. Mariz Abdou Kalliny & Chahir Zaki, 2024. "Are Global Value Chains Women Friendly in Developing Countries ? Evidence from Firm-Level Data," Working Papers hal-04392960, HAL.
    7. Mostafizur, Rahman Md. & Asma, Khatun Mst. & Islam, Moinul & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Kotani, Koji, 2025. "Does future design induce people to make a persistent change to sustainable food consumption?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    8. Aboushady, Nora & Zaki, Chahir, 2023. "Are global value chains for sale? On business-state relations in the MENA region," IDOS Discussion Papers 17/2023, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS).
    9. Marcio Cruz & Leila Baghdadi & Hassen Arouri, 2022. "High growth firms and trade linkages: Imports do matter," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 79-92, June.
    10. Aboushady, Nora & Zaki, Chahir, 2025. "Political connections and participation in global value chains: Evidence from MENA firms," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    11. Khatun Mst Asma & Moinul Islam & Tatsuyoshi Saijo & Koji Kotani, 2025. "A future design social experiment for sustainable agricultural production," Working Papers SDES-2025-3, Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management, revised Jan 2025.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03676587. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.