The food and agribusiness industry accounts for almost 10% of global consumer spending and has an estimated total value of USD 8 trillion. Given its considerable contribution to the gross domestic product, governments employ a diverse range of trade instruments to balance their product deficits while protecting domestic producers.
When considering the imports into a market, the policy makers often consider a critical volume of imports beyond which imports become too much. Imposing an absolute quota is one way to deal with problem, however, the World Trade Organization (WTO) members as part of the 1996 Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture forbade the use of quantitative trade restrictions.
Among alternative mechanisms in agricultural international trade, tariff rate quotas (TRQs) constitute an interesting case and have been the centre of attention in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations. A TRQ includes a two-tiered tariff, which applies a lower tariff for imports up to a specified quota limit and a higher tariff for subsequent imports above the quota limit.
In this research, we investigate the dynamics of TRQ systems while incorporating logistics and supply chain management perspectives.
The logistical factors play a significant role in global agricultural supply chains and, hence, are taken into consideration by importers when choosing their import strategies. Motivated by the real-world application of the TRQ systems, we discuss how logistical factors, such as lead-time, transportation channels, and warehousing influence the behaviour of global agricultural supply chains and affect the overall performance of TRQ systems under an FCFS administration.
Publications
Hezarkhani, B., S., Asian, A. Mansouri. Global Agricultural Supply Chains under Tariff Rate Quotas. Working paper.
Research team
Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project
Dr Behzad Hezarkhani - Dr. Behzad Hezarkhani is a Reader in Operations Management at Brunel University Business School. He is the programme leader for the MSc in Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) and the director of Operations & Information Systems Management (OISM) research group.
Dr. Behzad studies operations research, mathematical modelling, and game theory. He studies cooperation and competition in supply chain management such as inventory, scheduling and production, transportation and logistics. His research appeared in journals such as Production and Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, Transportation Resarch Part B, OR Spectrum, and Journal of Scheduling among others.
Before joining Brunel in 2018, he was an Assistant Professor at Nottingham University Business School. Prior to that, he was a post-doctoral fellow and adjunct lecturer at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. He received his PhD at Faculty of Business Administration at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, where his doctoral dissertation won the 2010 Canadian Purchasing Research Foundation (CPRF) scholarship.
Related Research Group(s)
Operations and Information Systems Management - We specialize in responsible and sustainable operation management exploring information systems, operations research, management science, and general management and strategic management knowledge and approaches across public and private industry sectors
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Project last modified 14/12/2021