Rosane Nunes de Faria

The Impact of Regulatory Heterogeneity on Agri-food Trade

We estimate the impact of regulatory heterogeneity on agri-food trade using a gravity analysis that relies on detailed data on non-tariff measures (NTMs) collected by the NTM-Impact project. The data cover a broad range of import requirements for agricultural and food products for the EU and nine of its major trade partners. We find that trade is significantly reduced when importing countries have stricter maximum residue limits (MRLs) for plant products than exporting countries. For most other measures, due to their qualitative nature, we were unable to infer whether the importer has stricter standards relative to the exporter, and we do not find a robust relationship between these measures and trade. Our findings suggest that, at least for some import standards, harmonising regulations will increase trade. We also conclude that tariff reductions remain an effective means to increase trade even when NTMs abound.

Regulatory Differences in the Approval of GMOs: Extent and Development over Time

Considering the regulatory approval developments for cotton, maize, and soybean within the time period 2000–2013, this paper assesses the extent of asymmetry in the authorizations of new genetically modified organism (GMO) events between importing and exporting countries. The results show an increase in the asynchronous approval across the majority of country pairs. However, focusing only on commercialized events and considering only regulatory approval differences in which the importers are more stringent than the exporters, the asynchronous approval is considerably lower, and the result indicates that the major trade leaders have synchronized their approval status for GMOs over time. Some countries, such as Norway, Switzerland, Thailand, and Turkey seem to face the highest potential for trade disruption, while the opposite holds for Japan and South Korea.

Dificuldade de adequação às medidas técnicas: a percepção das empresas exportadoras de alimentos

This article measures the degree of difficulty of compliance to technical measures for firms that export food in Brazil, through the construction of indexes. It has conducted a survey of 117 firms and data collected were analyzed by multivariate analysis. The detailed variables in the article which represent types of technical measures usually required in food export were grouped into two indices: Technical Specification Index (TSI) and Requirements Information Index (RII). The Wilcoxon test revealed that firms have greater difficulty to comply products and processes with technical specifications such as plant and production process requirements, conformity assessment procedures, food safety, product’s characteristics and environmental requirements.