The politics of export restrictions: A panel data analysis of African commodity processing industries

Nicolai Schulz

World Development, 2020, vol. 130, issue C

Abstract: This paper sets out to answer the question why African governments aiming to industrialize their economies introduce export bans on some processable commodities and not on others. It forwards the hypothesis that governments fear restricting the export of commodities produced by a larger share of the population, as their producers tend to possess significant potential to endanger the political survival of rulers. Importantly, the paper argues that large producer groups can unleash this potential because export bans have an extremely severe and visible imp act on them and that equally affected (yet wealthier and better-organized) traders have the incentives and means to inform producers about the government's responsibility and organize their protest against it. Yet, while the same holds for high export taxes, it does not for low export taxes. Low export taxes are less severe and visible in their impact, and traders are less agitated given that it is easier for them to pass on price distortions to producers. Producer mobilization is thus less likely and imposing low export taxes even on larger groups poses no significant risk to policy-makers. To test the argument against competing explanations, I conduct a large-N analysis based on an original dataset covering all export bans and taxes employed in 36 African states in the last three decades and find robust support for the core hypothesis: the larger the share of the population producing a commodity, the less likely governments will impose export bans on them. As expected, this also holds for high but not for low export taxes. Overall, these findings provide new insights into the critical role politics plays in industrial policy-making in Africa and shows that African mass producer groups can overcome usual Olsonian collective action problems to oppose policies adverse to their interests in certain circumstances.

Keywords: Politics of industrial policy; Policy attribution; Cross-group coalitions; Export bans and taxes; Group size and collective action; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X20300309
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:wdevel:v:130:y:2020:i:c:s0305750x20300309

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.104904

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().