Chinese Exports and Non-Tariff Measures: Testing for Heterogeneous Effects at the Product Level

Abstract

Concerns about a possible turn of the global trade policy agenda are on the rise. Indeed, even if tariffs are at a historically low levels, non-tariff measures (NTMs) play an important – and growing – role in global trade policy. In this paper, using a recently released database on NTMs (UNCTAD), and relying on a gravity model, we focus on Chinese exports with two aims in mind: the first is to test for possible heterogeneous effects of different type of NTMs. The second is to verify empirically whether NTMs have larger negative effects for specific set of goods, i.e. final goods. We find that 1) technical NTMs tend to have positive effects on trade flows, whereas non-technical NTMs do not have clear effects at the aggregate level and 2) NTMs have heterogeneous effects at the product level: in the case of final goods, non-technical NTMs have negative and significant effects.