Trade Openness and Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Should We Regulate the Labor Market?

Koffi Kpognon, Henri Atangana Ondoa (atanganaondoa@yahoo.fr) and Mamadou Bah (bah_20042000@yahoo.fr)
Additional contact information
Henri Atangana Ondoa: University of Yaoundé II, Cameroon
Mamadou Bah: Pan African University, Cameroon

Journal of Economic Integration, 2020, vol. 35, issue 4, 751-777

Abstract: This study analyzes the effect of trade openness and labor market regulation on youth employment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It covers a panel of 41 countries over the period 2002-2017, a period determined by the availability of the relevant data on labor market regulation. The results obtained using pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and instrumental variable-two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) estimators reveal that trade openness and labor market regulation rigidity have a positive and significant impact on youth employment in SSA. More interestingly, trade openness negatively and significantly affects youth employment in more rigid labor markets in SSA. This result remains robust in several robustness tests. Finally, this study also examined the case of young women’s employment in SSA.

Keywords: Trade Openness; Labor market regulation; Youth Employment; Pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) regression; instrumental variable-two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS); Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 F16 J08 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.e-jei.org Full text (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:ris:integr:0816

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Integration is currently edited by Seongeun Kim

More articles in Journal of Economic Integration from Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Yunhoe Kim (jei@sejong.ac.kr).