Browsing by Author "Hejazi, Mina"
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- Hidden Trade Costs? Maximum Residue Limits and U.S. Exports of Fresh Fruits and VegetablesHejazi, Mina; Grant, Jason H.; Peterson, Everett B. (Center for Agricultural Trade, 2018-07)Consecutive rounds of trade negotiations at the multilateral and regional level have resulted in significant reductions to agricultural tariffs. However, agricultural economists and policy makers alike agree that non-tariff measures (NTMs) are more obscure in nature and have the potential to be more trade distorting. Among the list of NTMs, Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures play an influential role in agri-food product trade. In this article we focus on a specific type of SPS measure known as maximum residue limits (MRLs) that features prominently in multilateral and regional trade negotiations. The purpose of this research project is threefold. First, we construct a comprehensive database of country-and-product specific MRLs for global fresh fruit and vegetable trade that varies by pesticide chemical type: herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. Second, we develop a new index summarizing the extent of bilateral MRL stringency between importing and exporting countries on pesticide tolerances focusing specific attention on the U.S. and its bilateral trading partners. Third, formal econometric models are developed to quantify and test the degree to which more stringent MRL standards in importing countries as compared to comparable domestic standards that exist in exporting countries restrict fresh fruit and vegetable trade. The results suggest importer MRL standards that are stricter than exporter MRLs can impart significant reductions in bilateral fresh fruit and vegetable trade.
- Three Essays on Tariff and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade and U.S. Market Access to ChinaHejazi, Mina (Virginia Tech, 2017-08-10)International trade encourages innovation, boosts development, reduces poverty, creates new markets, enhances competitiveness, improves product quality, and expands the consumer choice set. This dissertation is composed of three papers examining barriers to agricultural trade. The first two papers examine the impact of tariff and non-tariff barriers to agricultural trade while the third paper investigates China's domestic agricultural and international trade policies in order to promote U.S. market access in China. The first paper investigates how trade liberalization expands the range of products available for import and consumption. A multinomial logit framework of unordered export categories is developed: no trade margin, disappearing margin, intensive margin, and extensive margin. The findings of this paper suggest exporters gain from tariff reductions because they can establish new product relationships with the U.S. and enhance their U.S., and potentially global, supply chains. In addition, if consumers value variety in consumption, the extensive product margin results can be viewed as a positive welfare gain for U.S. agri-food consumers. The second paper focuses on non-tariff measures (NTM), which have significant implications for agricultural trade and food marketing. This paper focuses on maximum residue limits (MRLs) for pesticides and their trade restricting nature on U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable trade under the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Specifically, this research develops a bilateral index to measure the stringency of destination market tolerances for pesticide residues relative to those faced in the United States. Using a Heckman two-step model, the results shed considerable light on existing regulatory heterogeneity, which has important implications for policy to focus on increasing compatibility of NTMs across trading nations. The third paper examines China's evolving agricultural and trade policies and discusses the potential impact on U.S. exports to China. China's agricultural imports, and policies affecting those agricultural products, have important implications for the U.S. as the leading export supplier to the Chinese market. China's price support programs, aimed at improving food security and Chinese farmers' incomes, increased domestic prices. This created a gap between domestic and international prices that led to excessive Chinese stockpiles. In response, China implemented respective target prices for cotton and soybeans, eliminated the price support for corn, and continues to introduce new policies.
- Trade impact of maximum residue limits in fresh fruits and vegetablesHejazi, Mina; Grant, Jason H.; Peterson, Everett B. (Elsevier, 2022-01)Interfering maximum residue limits (MRLs) for pesticides with agricultural trade is becoming important for food and trade policies in the early 21st century. Differing levels for pesticide residues among countries have the potential to disrupt trade significantly. We employ a non-linear and disaggregated stringency index to quantify the degree of regulatory heterogeneity levels for pesticides between trading nations for fruits and vegetables in 2013 and 2014 and investigate the trade-restricting nature of this measure using the structural gravity framework. Our findings indicate that stricter importer MRLs reduce bilateral trade to the tune of 8.8%. Looking closer at MRLs with US partners, the effect of stricter MRLs is quite elastic concerning its impact on the US -EU trade. In particular, the estimates imply that a more stringent MRL's policy decreases the US export of fruits and vegetables to the EU members by a striking 13.8%. At the disaggregated level of MRL indices over different classes of chemicals, the results indicate that there is a significant gap in regulations regarding MRLs among several major US foreign markets for fruits and vegetables, particularly in the EU and the Trans-Pacific trading partners.