The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Enterprises in Small Backward Economies: The Case of Chad and Gabon

Giorgio Barba Navaretti (), Riccardo Faini and Bernard Gauthier ()

No 02-05, Cahiers de recherche from HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of the devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994 and of trade and fiscal reforms on enterprise development in Chad and Gabon. These reforms provide a natural experiment to assess the impact of trade liberalisation in countries with a small and backward manufacturing sector. The empirical analysis is based on a new panel data base covering almost the total population of manufacturing firms in Chad and Gabon, and containing data spanning from the year before to two years after t he reforms. The paper finds that although firms’ response to changing incentives was non-negligible, with a shift of output from non tradables to tradables and an increase in productivity, the reform process was unable to generate a virtuous and self-sustained circle, where export expansion brings a generalized productivity increase which in turn feeds on further export growth.

Keywords: trade liberalization; enterprise development; output, productivity and export performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 O12 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2002-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-mac
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Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Enterprises in Small Backward Economies: the Case of Chad and Gabon (2006)
Working Paper: The Impact of Trade Liberalisation on Enterprises in Small Backward Economies: The Case of Chad and Gabon (2003)
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