Standards and political connections: Evidence from Tunisia

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kruse, Hendrik W.; Martinez-Zarzoso, Inma; Baghdadi, Leila
• 署名单位: University of Gottingen; Universite de Orleans; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite de Orleans; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universitat Jaume I; Universite de Tunis
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102731
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: NTMs; market power; political economy; Development; imports; Tunisia

摘要

In this paper we investigate whether trade liberalization leads to more stringent product standards in a developing country context, uncovering the role that the connected firms' market share plays in markets dominated by imports. We estimate a two-part model using data over the period from 2002 to 2010 to test whether additional product standards emerge in sectors where politically connected firms have a higher market share. Our main results show that the mechanisms we anticipated are in fact at play in Tunisia. During the implementation period of the EU-Tunisia association agreement, we find that sectors with a higher import share of connected firms - linked to the Ben Ali family - tend to have a higher probability of an increasing number of technical barriers to trade. This result is robust to addressing endogeneity issues and to the introduction of dynamics into the model.