Standardization and international competitiveness: evidence from China’s agricultural products

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the effect of standardization on the international competitiveness of China’s agricultural products using panel data of 89 countries from 1995 to 2018. We find that standardization has a significantly positive effect on the international competitiveness of China’s agricultural products. The effect of standardization is more significant in the market where the competitiveness of China’s agricultural products is low. Technological innovation and agricultural product quality are two important channels through which standardization affects the international competitiveness of agricultural products.

KEYWORDS:

• Standardization
• international competitiveness
• agricultural products
• technological innovation
• mediating effect

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• F14
• Q17
• L15

Acknowledgements

We thank the editor, Mark Taylor, and the referee for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ The belief of ‘One Standard, One Test, Accepted Everywhere’ is widely accepted, which is proposed by the International Organization for Standardization (IOS), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

² Note that the number of agricultural national standards is not a perfect measure of standardization as the quality and influence of standards vary a lot (Clougherty and Grajek 2014).

³ The number of granted patents is not used because patent granting could be intervened by the government or other factors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund Youth Project of China: Research on Farmers’ Payment System for Rural Garbage Disposal [Grant No.19CJY037].