Quality Standards, Value Chains, and International Development

Over the past decades, the world has witnessed an unprecedented growth in global value chains, propelled by increasingly demanding quality standards. These trends lead to concerns about the impact of value chains on development and poverty and about the possible protectionist nature of quality standards in rich countries. This book offers the first integrated theoretical analysis of the economic and political factors which determine the level of quality standards, as well as their economic effects along the value chain. Using realistic assumptions motivated by empirical research, the theoretical framework in this book makes it possible to study the efficiency effects as well as the distributional consequences of one of the most striking evolutions affecting global trade and development today.1. Introduction; 2. Modelling standards; 3. Efficiency and equity effects of standards; 4. The political economy of standards and development; 5. International trade and standards; 6. Risks, externalities and the nature of standards; 7. Endogenous private and public standards in value chains; 8. Butterflies and political economy dynamics in standard setting; 9. The political economy of standards and inclusion in value chains; 10. Standards, production structure and inclusion in value chains; 11. Standards, market imperfections and vertical coordination in value chains; 12. Market power and vertical coordination in value chains; 13. Price transmission in value chains; 14. Commodity characteristics and value chain governance; 15. Economic liberalisation, value chains and development; 16. Standards and value chains with contracting costs: towards a general model; 17. General equilibrium effects of standards in value chains.