Food safety standards have proliferated as multilateral and bilateral trade agreements constrain traditional barriers to agricultural trade. Stringent food standards can be driven by rising consumer and public concern about food safety and other social objectives, or by the lobbying efforts from...

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...

Abstract: Maximum residue levels (MRLs) regulations in plant products can createunnecessary trade barriers on one hand and enhance demand via risk mitigation or qualityassurance on the other. We stipulate a generalized gravity equation model to disentanglethe effects of MRLs on the import demand...

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.

Policy reforms in the EU require careful consideration because the EU is a significant player in international agricultural markets for many commodities. We analyze the effects on world agricultural markets of the 2003 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform and the accession of ten new member...

We investigate major conjectures regarding the prevalence of cosmetic surgical procedures and their determinants, using a quantitative multidisciplinary approach and a recent international dataset from the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. Cosmetic surgery predominantly...

Abstract not available.

This paper explores the links between development assistance, agricultural output growth and imports in 56 developing economies over the period 1974–1990. The empirical model treats agricultural growth and imports, savings and aid as endogenous. The analysis also accounts for differences in...