Effects of Trade Liberalization on Textile and Apparel Exports from Sub-Sahara Africa

Johannes Van Biesebroeck and Elena Zaurino ()

No 8936, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper estimates the impact of market access liberalization in high-income countries on sub-Saharan African exports. The methodology exploits the large reduction in trade barriers that was induced by three unilateral trade liberalization initiatives: (1) the dismantling of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, (2) the African Growth and Opportunity Act in the United States, and (3) the extension of EU trade preferences for developed countries through its Everything-but-Arms program and the General System of Preferences. Using detailed product-level information at the 6-digit level of the Harmonized System and a triple-difference empirical specification, the usual endogeneity-of-policy critique is flexibly controlled for. The results indicate strongly positive export effects, which are especially large for textile, apparel, and leather products, and tend to be realized fully within 5 years. Each percentage point reduction in import tariffs raises exports to the EU by 0.73 percent and to the United States by 0.30 percent; effects are two to three times as large for textiles. The presence of strong Chinese imports has ambiguous effects on countries'ability to take advantage of trade liberalization as the impact on the export effects to the EU and the United States show an opposite sign.

Keywords: International Trade and Trade Rules; Macroeconomic Management; Common Carriers Industry; Food&Beverage Industry; Plastics&Rubber Industry; Textiles; Apparel&Leather Industry; Pulp&Paper Industry; Construction Industry; Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies; Energy and Mining; General Manufacturing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-07-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/46696156 ... ub-Sahara-Africa.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:8936

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().