The Cost of Compliance with Product Standards for Firms in Developing Countries: An Econometric Study
The Cost of Compliance with Product Standards for Firms in Developing Countries: An Econometric Study
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DOI：
10.1596/1813-9450-3590
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发表时间：
2005-05
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
K. Maskus;T. Otsuki;J. Wilson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Maskus;T. Otsuki;J. Wilson
标准和技术条例的存在是为了保护消费者安全或实现其他目标，例如确保电信系统的互操作性。然而，标准和技术规章会大大提高公司的开办和生产成本。Maskus、大月和Wilson建立了计量经济学模型，首次估算了发展中国家企业在遵守主要进口国规定的标准方面所增加的生产成本。他们使用世界银行技术性贸易壁垒调查数据库中16个发展中国家的公司一级数据。他们的研究结果表明，标准确实会增加短期生产成本，因为它需要额外的劳动力和资本投入。进口国为满足合规成本而增加的投资每增加1%，可变生产成本就会增加0.06%至0.13%，这在统计上是一个显著的增长。作者还发现，合规的固定成本是不小的-每家公司约为425，000美元，或平均增加值的4.7%。这些结果可被解释为表明标准和技术条例可能构成贸易壁垒的程度。虽然对合规成本的相对影响相对较小，但这些成本可能是推动公司出口成功的决定性因素。在这方面，有可能考虑到，向有进口管制的国家进行更有限的出口所涉及的费用可能不符合世界贸易组织鼓励将管制与国际标准统一起来的规则。然后，可以通过确定补贴或公共支持计划的需要程度来寻求政策解决方案，以抵消因不协调的技术法规而产生的成本劣势。
Standards and technical regulations exist to protect consumer safety or to achieve other goals, such as ensuring the interoperability of telecommunications systems, for example. Standards and technical regulations can, however, raise substantially both start-up and production costs for firms. Maskus, Otsuki, and Wilson develop econometric models to provide the first estimates of the incremental production costs for firms in developing nations in conforming to standards imposed by major importing countries. They use firm-level data generated from 16 developing countries in the World Bank Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Survey Database. Their findings indicate that standards do increase short-run production costs by requiring additional inputs of labor and capital. A 1 percent increase in investment to meet compliance costs in importing countries raises variable production costs by between 0.06 and 0.13 percent, a statistically significant increase. The authors also find that the fixed costs of compliance are nontrivial-approximately $425,000 per firm, or about 4.7 percent of value added on average. The results may be interpreted as one indication of the extent to which standards and technical regulations might constitute barriers to trade. While the relative impact on costs of compliance is relatively small, these costs can be decisive factors driving export success for companies. In this context, there is scope for considering that the costs associated with more limited exports to countries with import regulations may not conform to World Trade Organization rules encouraging harmonization of regulations to international standards, for example. Policy solutions then might be sought by identifying the extent to which subsidies or public support programs are needed to offset the cost disadvantage that arises from nonharmonized technical regulations.