Trade costs and demand-enhancing effects of agrifood standards: Consequences for Sub-Saharan Africa

Agrifood standards impede trade by increasing compliance costs, but they can also enhance trade by signalling quality. This paper disentangles the trade costs and demand-enhancing effects of two important standards-technical barriers to trade, and sanitary and phytosanitary measures-on (i) global agricultural trade flows and (ii) fruit, nut, and vegetable trade between sub-Saharan Africa and high-income OECD countries. Combining estimates fromunit value and trade value regressions set within structural gravity frameworks, we show that trading standards increase trade costs-which exporters pass on to consumers in the form of higher prices-but they also increase trade volume. For agrifood exports from sub-Saharan Africa, compliance with standards guarantees market access at higher prices to high-value OECD markets.