Do Technical Barriers to Trade Measures Affect Vietnam’s Tea Exports? Evidence from the Gravity Model

Abstract

This paper explores how technical barriers to trade (TBT) affect Vietnam’s tea exports to 55 importing countries from 2001 to 2019. We use the gravity model with different estimation methods: ordinary least square (OLS), fixed-effect (FE), and random effect (RE) to estimate the impact of TBT on Vietnam’s tea exports. The results show that although GDP, population, distance, tariff, and participation in World Trade Organization (WTO) are crucial factors, the TBT measures imposed by these importing countries have significantly negative impacts on Vietnam’s tea exports. Our findings reveal that while a 1% increase in the cumulative TBT measures imposed by developing countries decreases Vietnam's tea export by 0.341%, the figure for developed countries is 1.308%.