Product standards and export quality: Micro evidence from China

•This paper studies whether the product standards improve the product quality.•China's transaction level data from customs are used for investigation.•We exploit EU's policy on lighter's standard as a natural experiment.•Triple difference method is adopted for identification.•The results reveal that lighter standards lift export quality of China's lighters to EU.

Using European Union's decision on lighters on 11 May 2006 that only lighters which are child-resistant are placed on the market as a natural experiment, this paper firstly examines the impact of product standards on export quality causally. We use China's HS-8 digit product level trade data and triple difference approach to analyze whether the product standards causally improve the product quality. We get the answer yes.