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Supranational agreements and regulation

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A decrease of price support may lead to farmers' bankruptcy with low-quality ... The reply: develop quality insurance. Second pillar of the CAP ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Supranational agreements and regulation


1
Supranational agreements and regulation
  • Stéphan Marette
  • INRA, Paris

2
Barriers to Trade
  • TARIFF BARRIERS
  • NON-TARIFF BARRIERS
  • What kind of quality regulation in a context of
    trade liberalization?

3
Tariff Barriers and Trade Liberalization
  • Does trade liberalization (namely less taxes,
    subsidies or quotas) increase the average
    quality and the consumer surplus?
  • More competition or more concentration?
  • More risks (less supply security or new risk such
    as invasive species) and more price volatility?

4
Benefits of Trade liberalization
  • The possibility of consuming a higher quality of
    products (vertical differentiation).
  • Countries can take advantage of growing economies
    of scale when markets are opened up this in
    turn reduces production costs at constant
    quality.
  • The increased competition resulting from trade
    liberalisation encourages firms to offer a better
    quality/price mix.
  • It increases product variety and freedom to
    choose for consumers.

5
Quality and risk of insolvency
  • If no problem of insolvency, a decrease of price
    support leads farmers to choose more high-quality
    products.
  • When the cost of investment for high-quality is
    large, there is a risk of insolvency for
    producers in a context of uncertainty for quality
    (Marette Zago (2004)).
  • A decrease of price support may lead to farmers
    bankruptcy with low-quality products and it has
    an ambiguous effect for the choice of quality by
    farmers
  • The reply develop quality insurance

6
Second pillar of the CAP
  • Second pillar of the new Common Agricultural
    Policy will subsidize sustainable development or
    high-quality products
  • How to measure the product quality or the
     environmental  quality?
  • Will a subsidy really finance the quality
    improvement?

7
Industry and famers
  • Concentration in the agribusiness (industry,
    supermarkets)
  • Low sensitivity to trade liberalization
  • Farmers are scattered with no market power
  • Large variability in quantity and quality
  • Risk of insolvency
  • New organization under trade liberalization

8
Farmers reaction in a context of trade
liberalization
  • French Potatoes producers organized the
    development of new varieties in a context of
    intense competition with Spain, UK
  • Bintje low quality
  • Higher price for new varieties
  • Autres varietes  other varieties
  • Chairs fermes Firm-fleshed potatoes
  • The market share of the new varieties increased
    between 1990 and 2000

9
Market shares in volume of potato varieties in
France
10
Models to measure quality and trade
  • Applied General Equilibrium models (GTAP)
  • Homogeneous goods
  • Diversity according the origin (with Armington)
  • More diversity linked to the trade liberalization
  • Drogué, Marette, Ramos (2004)
  • Comparison between the welfare under an
    aggregated model when product differentiation
    is overlooked and the welfare when product
    differentiation is considered is ambiguous
  • Mussa Rosen specification (vertical
    differentation)

11
Non tariff barriers
  • Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement
  • Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement
  • Standard, labeling and liability are necessary to
    protect consumers and insure safety
  • Heterogeneous policies that may limit trade

12
How to measure non tariff barriers?
  • Price gap method
  • Gravity
  • Are data reliable?
  • Cost benefit
  • One example Analysis for avocadoes in
    California (Orden and Romano, 1996)

13
Standards as Non tariff barriers
  • Otsuki, Wilson and Sewadeh (2001 ERAE and FP)
    show that the European Union regulation on
    aflatoxin will result in a trade flow that is 63
    lower than when the Codex Alimentarius standards
    are followed
  • Maskus, Otsuki and Wilson (2004) show that
    standards increase short-run production costs by
    requiring additional labor and capital.

14
Standards as Non tariff barriers
  • The limit of the previous approaches is the
    unpredictable reaction of consumers in Western
    countries if the regulation is dropped or
    reduced
  • Market context, media
  • The supermarkets private standards are more
    important than public regulation
  • Berdegué, Balsevich, Flores and Reardon (Food
    Policy, 2004).
  • More capital in developing countries for
    developing HACCP procedures and famous brands is
    necessary for entering a market.

15
Labeling
  • Brand and/or labeling
  • Great diversity
  • Quality (Red label)
  • Eco-labels, organic, sustainable agriculture
  • GMO
  • Labels of origins
  • Too many labels in a context of trade
    liberalization?
  • Regulation is necessary for avoiding consumers
    confusion!

16
Voluntary or mandatory labelling?
  • The revelation/certification is depending on
  • cost structure (marginal or fixed)
  • competition among producers
  • competition among certification agencies
  • Only mandatory labeling can be studied as
    potential barrier to entry

17
Mandatory Labeling
  • GMO Labeling SPS or TBT?
  • Crespi and Marette (2003) show that consumers
    with different perceptions and preferences may
    lead to different policies/choices of label among
    countries
  • Trade liberalization may lead to changes in the
    label policy (Bureau, Marette, Schiavina, 1998)
  • Difficulty to inform consumers regarding the
    origin

18
Voluntary Labels
  • Collective labels suffer from competition with
    registered brand name (appellation of origins)
  • Wine sector
  • Are brands more efficient on the international
    markets?
  • Labels of origins matter for consumers in France!
  • It is a preference and not only a regulation
  • Trust in national regulation

19
Most important conditions of production for
French consumers (Credoc, 2001)
  • 1. No child labor
  • 2. Products from France (ORIGIN)
  • 3. Good conditions for workers in factories
  • 4. Absence of pollution during the production
    process
  • 9. Animal welfare

20
Conclusion
  • Complexity of the mechanisms
  • Trade liberalization should lead to new policies
  • Standard, labeling and liability are necessary
  • Better measures/quantification of the effects
    between trade and quality are essential to
    improve regulation
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