This article uses a theory‐based translog gravity model to investigate the heterogeneous effects of food standards on aggregate agricultural trade. We revisit the ‘standards‐as‐barriers‐to‐trade’ debate with a distinctive twist. In contrast to existing works, we show that standards reduce trade but even more so for countries that trade smaller volumes. Our identification strategy exploits the within‐country variation in specific trade concerns. We confirm that stricter importer standards are indeed trade‐restrictive. However, the estimated trade cost elasticity varies depending on how intensively two countries trade. Specifically, it decreases in magnitude with an increasing import share of the exporter in the importing country's total imports. The reason is simple but intuitive; bigger trading partners find it more profitable to invest in meeting the costs of importer‐specific standards. This work is novel in showing that the standards–trade debate misses out on an important heterogeneity driven by existing import shares. Liberalising non‐tariff measures will favour smaller trading partners more than well‐established ones.

中文翻译：

---

标准对农业贸易流的异质性影响

本文使用基于理论的超对数引力模型来研究食品标准对农业总贸易的异质影响。我们以一种独特的方式重新审视“将标准作为贸易壁垒”的争论。与现有作品相比，我们表明标准减少了贸易，但对于贸易量较小的国家而言，减少幅度更大。我们的识别策略利用了特定贸易关注点的国内差异。我们确认，严格的进口商标准确实对贸易有限制。但是，估计的贸易成本弹性取决于两国的贸易强度。具体来说，随着出口商在进口国总进口额中所占份额的增加，进口量的幅度会下降。原因很简单但很直观。更大的贸易伙伴发现，投资于符合进口商特定标准成本的业务更具盈利能力。这项工作是新颖的，它表明标准贸易辩论错过了由现有进口份额驱动的重要异质性。自由化非关税措施将比成熟的贸易伙伴更青睐较小的贸易伙伴。