The impact of food safety standards on rice exports from Vietnam

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of food safety standard on rice export from Vietnam. The study covers 154 countries in the UN Comtrade data website from 2003 to 2013 and uses aflatoxin B1 to present for food safety standard. The findings confirm that there is a negative impact of food safety standard on rice export from Vietnam. Moreover, there is an existence of self – selection bias in the data. Although Vietnam has exported rice to 154 countries in all over the world, there are some countries that do not import rice of Vietnam. In other words, Vietnam does not export to those countries. The reasons for this problem could be that those countries set low maximum allowable of aflatoxin B1 or the citizens of those countries do not eat low – value rice from Vietnam. Besides, high-income countries will import less rice compared to lower income countries. The reason for this issue could be that rice is a staple goods and the demand of rice depends on culture and habit of people in importing countries. Another finding is that joining WTO or signing FTA could lead Vietnam to export more rice to other countries. However, this is only a signal, this issue should be considered in depth in future researches by using higher econometric methodologies.