摘要：This study assesses the impact of adopting international food safety standards and regional harmonization of standards on global trade patterns of cereals, dried fruits and nuts. The paper develops econometric models to estimate the effect of aflatoxin standards in 15 importing countries on the export from 31 (21 developing ) countries in the world. Results are combined to predict how the direction of trade is altered by food safety regulations under alternative scenarios. Adopting international food safety standards recommended by Codex is found to increase the trade among these countries by 5.3 percent. At the level where the increase and decrease in trade flow are break-even, EU countries increase both imports and exports whereas the decrease in trade flow among developing countries outweighs the improved access of these countries to the EU market.
