Food safety standards, and the tradeoff between these standards, and agricultural export growth, are at the forefront of the trade policy debate. How food safety is addressed in the world trade system, is critical for developing countries that continue to rely on agricultural exports. In a...

Growing concern over health risks associated with food products is at the forefront of trade policy debate. At the heart of this debate is the"precautionary principle,"which holds that precautions should be taken against health, safety, and environmental risks even whenscience has not...

The relationships between trade facilitation, trade flows, and capacity building are complex and challenging to assess, both empirically and in implementation. The authors measure and estimate the relationship between trade facilitation and trade flows across 75 countries in global trade,...

There has been increasing use of technical regulations as instruments of commercial policy in the context of multilateral, regional, and global trade. These nontariff barriers are of special concern to developing countries, which may bear additional costs in meeting mandatory standards. Many...

The author provides an overview and data relevant to the interests of developing countries as they engage in continuing agricultural trade negotiations set forth in the World Trade Organization Ministerial held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. He examines country performance in agricultural...

How governments regulate food safety and environmental protection, including pesticide residue levels, has important implications for trade. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001, included statements on standards, and their impact on market access...

After reviewing the current state of standards and trade in Central America, the authors suggest top priorities for reform from a trade policy perspective in a new and increasingly important area of public policy and development. They conclude that it makes sense to: a) take a regional rather...

The authors create a standards restrictiveness index using newly available data on maximum residue levels of pesticides for 61 importing countries. The paper analyzes the impact that food safety standards have on international trade of agricultural products. The findings suggest that more...

The authors estimate the impact of aggregate indicators of"soft"and"hard"infrastructure on the export performance of developing countries. They build four new indicators for 101 countries over the period 2004-07. Estimates show that trade facilitation reforms do improve the export performance of...

Standards and technical regulations exist to protect consumer safety or to achieve other goals, such as ensuring the interoperability of telecommunications systems, for example. Standards and technical regulations can, however, raise substantially both start-up and production costs for firms....