Since 2004 there has been a sharp decrease in border protection for the EU rice industry. Because the EU grants trade preferences to a considerable number of rice exporting developing countries, the reform implied preference erosion as well. By addressing the impact of preference erosion on...

Over the time a large number of reciprocal preferential trade agreements (RTAs) have been concluded among countries. Recently many studies have used gravity equations in order to estimate the effect of RTAs on trade flows between partners. These studies report very different estimates since they...

This paper aims to assess the role of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) for new member states (NMSs) exports in the agri-food sector, in the period just before the EU accession actually stepped into force. The assessment is based on a detailed sectoral gravity model, which was enhanced with inclusion...

Since the Single European Market (SEM) has been established, the free movement of goods has been facilitated not only by removing border formalities, but also by the technical harmonisation of national legislation in each member state. For the agri-food sector a particular concern is to...

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...

Improvement in the performance of agricultural markets was the ultimate goal of market liberalisation. In this paper, firm (trader) size distribution as a factor influencing market performance is analyzed using maize and fertilizer traders from Kenya. Firm size distribution was assessed by...

The acceptance of the NAFTA and GATT trade agreements will impact the U.S. peanut industry. This paper examines trade distorting policies and evaluates the effects of trade liberalization on peanut producers, shellers, manufactures, and U.S. consumers of peanut products. Decreasing marketing...

Octopus exports are an important source of foreign exchange for Mauritania. The export market has historically been dominated by coordinated Japanese buyers, a situation that led Mauritania to create the Societe Mauritanienne de Commercialisation de Poisson (SMCP) to negotiate with buyers and...

This paper addresses the question of whether the export demand for soybeans and soybean products changed structurally over the 1950 to 1992 period as the U.S. agricultural sector became more integrated with the rest of the world economy. The results suggest that export demands were stable for...

This paper aims to determine the solidity of the notion of the "coffee paradox" using annual data from 1977 to 2007. In the confines of an export supply model, we analyze the effects of export coffee price on export volume. Price and profit equation are used to determine the effects of market...