Trade Liberalization and Child Mortality: A Synthetic Control Method

Alessandro Olper, Daniele Curzi and Johan Swinnen

No 212597, 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: This paper investigates the causal effect of trade liberalization on children mortality by exploiting 40 policy reform experiments spanning the 1960-2010 period. We use a new approach – the Synthetic Control Method – for comparative case studies. Using this method we assess at the country level the trajectory of post-reform health outcomes of treated countries, which experienced a trade liberalization, with the trajectory of a combination of similar untreated countries. Contrary to previous findings, we showed that the effect of trade liberalization on health outcomes display a huge heterogeneity both in the direction and the magnitude of the effect. Among the 40 investigated case studies, 20 displayed a reduction in children mortality after a trade liberalization, and the majority of these are statistically significant. In 18 country casestudies we did not find any relevant effect, while in two cases ‒ South Africa and Mauritania ‒ we found a strong statistically significant worsening in child mortality after trade liberalization. Yet, the underline reasons of these negative effects are driven by very different situations.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Trade liberalization and child mortality: A Synthetic Control Method (2018)
Working Paper: Trade liberalization and child mortality: a synthetic control method (2017)
Working Paper: Trade liberalization and child mortality: a synthetic control method (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae15:212597

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.212597

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