Technical Barriers to Trade: Determinants and Implications

Abstract

Almost all tariff lines are bound within the schedules of concessions of developed countries, and duties cannot be used to increase the level of protection. Instead, increasing number of non-tariff measures (NTMs) have given rise to disputes and trade conflicts. World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations consider certain motivations behind imposition of these instruments to be legitimate such as those related to human, environment, health, and safety issues. While regulations of the WTO oblige governments to provide justifiable reason behind their trade policy instruments, they might as well seek for the sale of their industrial protection to some special interest groups supporting them. Technical Barriers to Trade (TBTs) are a sub-category of NTMs with complex nature whose either motivations or implications are not very clear. In this dissertation, I shed light on some aspects of NTMs with specific focus on TBT and Specific Trade Concerns (STCs). In the first chapter, I study the determining factors of TBT STCs over the period 1995-2011. In the second chapter, the trade effects of these TBT STCs maintained by the European Union, China, and the United States at 4-digit level of Harmonized System will be analysed. In the third chapter, I provide a cost-benefit analysis in a partial equilibrium framework to quantify the welfare consequences of a prohibitive NTM which is aimed at a foreign product with negative characteristics. Overall, this dissertation emphasizes more on the complexity of NTMs and it provides us with better insights on the determinants and implications of these trade policy measures.