Brazilian agricultural exports: Quality matters?

The general objective of this paper was to verify the relationship between the quality of the products and the Brazilian agricultural exports. In addition, we sought to identify the effects of the exporter's income, distance and SPS and TBT measures on the quality of exported products. For that, Brazilian agricultural export data (HS 4-digit) for the 97 main tradings partners in the period from 1997 to 2016 was used. Among the results obtained for the analyzes related to the trade with new markets, it was identified negative effects of quality both on the probability of accessing new markets and on the share of trade made with them. For the intensive margin, the value exported with existing partners, the estimated coefficients showed that the increase in quality is associated with a higher exported amount. In addition, this research identified a positive effect of income and distance on quality. Finally, the issuance of SPS and TBT measures by Brazilian importers also led to an improvement in the quality of agricultural products exported by the country. Acknowledgement