THE IMPACT OF STANDARDS ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE FLOWS —AN EMPIRICAL STUDY BASED ON A GRAVITY MODEL

摘要

In attempt to examine the commonly held view that country-specific product and process standards are barriers to trade and that harmonizing standards is favorable to trade, relying upon ISO databases, we employed a gravity model by introducing an index representing standardization activities-the number of ISO-setting standards participated by the sample country-pairs solely or mutually, and quantified the impact of removing technical barriers to trade(TBT) on imports and the effect of international standardization activities on international trade flows. The results positively confirm our estimation that it is indeed the case that international standardization is trade-enhancing.