ABSTRACT The increasing interest of policymakers and academics on non-tariff measures (NTMs) has stimulated a growing literature on their effects on the agri-food trade of African countries. The empirical evidence, however, is ambiguous: some studies suggest that NTMs are trade barriers and others suggest they have a catalyst role for trade. Understanding the drivers of these contrasting effects, and the prevailing one, would allow one to draw important conclusions. We review, through a meta-analytical approach, a set of empirical studies that quantify the effects of NTMs on African agri-food trade. We find a prevalence of the trade-impeding effects. Our results also help explaining differences in NTMs’ effects due to methodological and structural heterogeneity. Moreover, the effects of NTMs vary across the types of NTMs and analysed commodities. We conclude by comparing our findings with existing literature and emphasise which research areas deserve further investigation, such as intra-Africa trade or trade effects of technical NTMs.

中文翻译：

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非关税措施对非洲农业食品部门贸易业绩的影响

摘要 政策制定者和学术界对非关税措施 (NTM) 的兴趣日益浓厚，这刺激了越来越多关于其对非洲国家农产品贸易影响的文献。然而，经验证据是模棱两可的：一些研究表明非关税措施是贸易壁垒，而另一些研究表明它们对贸易具有催化作用。了解这些对比效应的驱动因素以及主要影响因素，将有助于得出重要结论。我们通过元分析方法回顾了一组量化非关税措施对非洲农产品贸易影响的实证研究。我们发现贸易阻碍效应普遍存在。我们的结果还有助于解释由于方法和结构异质性而导致的 NTM 效应的差异。此外，NTM 的影响因 NTM 的类型和分析的商品而异。