Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) on pesticides and veterinary drugs in plant and animal products are established to promote food safety and animal and plant health. In practice, however, they are often accused of creating unnecessary trade barriers. The controversy is more prominent when a given...

Domestic technical measures such as SPS and TBTs can enhance import demand via information disclosure and quality improvement, or hamper foreign export supply via imposing sizeable compliance costs, or both. The traditional gravity equation model estimates the net effect of these measures on...

Replaced with revised version of paper 07/02/10.

Domestic technical measures such as SPS and TBTs can enhance import demand via information disclosure and quality improvement, or hamper foreign export supply via imposing sizable compliance costs, or both. The traditional gravity equation model estimates the net effect of these measures on...

We provide an ex-post econometric examination of the harmonization and tightening of the EU Maximum Residues Limit (MRL) on aflatoxins in 2002 and its impact on African exports of groundnut products. We show that the MRL set by the EU has no significant trade impact on groundnut exports from...

We introduce an easily implemented and flexible calibration technique for partial demand systems, combining recent developments in incomplete demand systems and a set of restrictions conditioned on the available elasticity estimates. The technique accommodates various degrees of knowledge on...

We analyze the effects of a domestic standard that reduces an externality associated with the consumption of the good targeted by the standard, using a model in which foreign and domestic producers compete in the domestic good market. Producers can reduce expected damage associated with the...