Trade Liberalization and Economic Growth – A Study on Ghana, Nigeria and Cote d`Ivoire

Francis Amoasah

No 188, FIW Working Paper series from FIW

Abstract: The study considers the relationship between trade liberalization and economic growth among three sub-Saharan African countries: Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d’Ivoire. We find no statistically significant increase in the economic growth of the countries following trade liberalization. However, post-trade-liberalization exports (and trade) of the countries did increase. Yet, the need for the promotion of exports in high value-added industries remain an age long unduly overdue problem. Increases in imports following liberalization dominate the increases in exports, export earnings remain susceptible to international price volatility and a chunk of the export commodities remain unprocessed as well as broadly narrow in range. The EU, US and China are the major trading partners to Africa, even more (in percentage terms) than the continent trades among itself. While reasonable efforts are being made on the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), it should be seen that regional economic integration does not automatically improve growth. However, proper desegregation with the needed checks and balances may help yield for Africa some gains from trade. It is time, therefore, that the countries devise important measures to ensure that these envisaged significant gains from trade are duly realised.

Keywords: trade liberalization; convergence; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 F43 O10 O40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2018-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.fiw.ac.at/fileadmin/Documents/Publikat ... er/N_188_Amoasah.pdf full text
none

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:wsr:wpaper:y:2018:i:188

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
FIW Project Office Austrian Institute of Economic Research Arsenal Objekt 20 A-1030 Vienna

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in FIW Working Paper series from FIW
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().