Pros And Cons Of Export Bans

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Export prohibitions apply mainly for environmental, food security, marketing, pricing, and domestic supply reasons. Countries ban exports of a commodity in order to ensure greater availability in their domestic markets at lower prices. Export bans are undertaken as an effort to redistribute welfare to the consumer. Yet, the greater is the market intervention, the greater is the welfare loss if the consumption elasticity is very low. An export ban increases the availability of the product to domestic consumers, and domestic prices decrease to absorb this increased availability, leading to a price distortion. The exact price distortion will depend on the price elastic¬ity of the product: if consumer demand is responsive to price changes, a smaller price decrease is required to absorb excess availability. …show more content…

When export quotas or licenses are imposed, a ceiling is placed on the amount of allowable exports. Exporters require prior approval to export in form of a license with total capacity licensed equal to the size of the quota. This practice leads the way for exporters, government or other parties to benefit financially from the relatively scarce opportunities to export. In essence, a binding export quota should have the same welfare impacts as an export ban, since both are quantitative restrictions on imports, the latter more stringent than the former.Export bans therefore result in greater welfare loss when they are imposed on inelastic staple goods such as grains, as they require a greater price decrease to absorb the increase in domestic supply.Similar to export bans, welfare losses under export quotas are greater for staple goods like grains than for non-staple goods that show greater demand responsiveness to price

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