characteristics. Hence, their impact on trade margins depends on the relative magnitude of compliance costs and the benefits derived from reducing information asymmetry, rendering it theoretically ambiguous.<sup>2</sup> Our empirical results show that standards and technical regulations reduce firm-product level exports from the sample of countries used in our study. At the intensive margin, the elasticity of firm-product level exports to the count of NTMs is about 0.07%, on average. This elasticity rises to 0.13% and 0.17% in the manufacturing and agriculture sectors, respectively. At the extensive margin of export adjustment, defined as export market entry and exit, we find no effect. The latter findings, coupled with the significant effects at the intensive margin, imply that for African firms, NTMs increase more their variable costs of trade than their fixed costs. The results are also heterogeneous along multiple dimensions. In the agriculture sector, the trade reduction is driven mostly by SPS measures, while the trade reduction effects are driven by TBT measures in the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the trade-reducing effects vary by the location of the product along the value chain, being more pronounced for final goods than for intermediate goods. These effects also decrease with firm size, with larger and medium-sized being relatively less affected compared to small firms. However, we find that the trade-reducing effects are not heterogeneous across the level of development of the destination country, and whether the export destination is within or outside Africa.

In extending our results, we assess the effects of NTMs on export volumes, prices, and product quality following Khandelwal et al. (2013). In the agriculture sector, the decrease in export values is due to lower export prices, while in the manufacturing sector, they are driven by a reduction in export volumes. Although we did not observe the product quality upgrading effects of NTMs in our sample, we find that initial product quality moderates the trade-reducing effects of NTMs. The trade-reducing effect of NTMs at the intensive margin is reversed for firms with higher initial product quality in the manufacturing sector and is less pronounced for firms with relatively high initial product quality in the agriculture sector.

Our work contributes to the literature on how standards and regulations shape firms’ export strategies in developing countries in three main ways. First, we examine the relationship between technical measures and trade using firm-level data and focussing on both the agriculture and manufacturing sectors. Standards and regulations are more likely to affect the trade of firms in low-income countries, especially those in Africa because they tend to be more standard-takers rather than standard-makers. Yet, much of this research has focused on relatively more developed and emerging economies, leaving a gap in understanding the specific challenges and opportunities facing African countries.<sup>3</sup> Most of the existing literature on the trade effects of NTMs for African exports have predominantly done this at the country level for the agriculture sector (Otsuki et al., 2001; Czubala et al., 2009; Kareem et al., 2017; Tchakounte and Fiankor, 2021; Sanjuán López et al., 2021; Traoré and Tamini, 2022), mainly due to lack of firm-level data for these countries.<sup>4</sup> It is firms and not countries that largely engage in international trade (Bernard et al., 2007). Thus, our study builds upon Fernandes

> 2Going forward, we will use the terms standard-like NTMs, SPS and TBT measures, and standards and technical regulations interchangeably.

> 3See, for example case studies from France (Fontagné et al., 2015; Schmidt and Steingress, 2022; Disdier et al., 2023), China (Beestermöller et al., 2018), Colombia (Rosenow, 2024), and Peru (Curzi et al., 2020). 4Santeramo and Lamonaca (2019) offer a review of this literature.

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