Product Standards and Margins of Trade : Firm Level Evidence

We address the trade effect of restrictive product standards on the margins of trade, by matching a detailed panel of French firm exports with a new database compiling the list of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary regulatory measures that have been raised as a concern in dedicated committees of the WTO. By using specific trade concerns to capture the degree of restrictiveness of product standards we focus only on standards that are perceived as a barrier to trade. We analyse their effects on three trade related aspects: (i) probability to export and to exit the export market (firm-product extensive margins), (ii) value exported (firm-product intensive margin) and (iii) export prices. We find that SPS concerns discourage the presence of French exporters in SPS-imposing foreign markets. We also find a negative effect of SPS imposition on the intensive margins of trade. Finally, the former negative effects of SPS are attenuated for big firms