Has the multilateral Hong Kong Ministerial decision on duty free quota free market access provided a breakthrough in the Least developed countries' export performance?

Sèna Kimm Gnangnon and Shishir Priyadarshi

No ERSD-2016-06, WTO Staff Working Papers from World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division

Abstract: This paper assesses the impact of the 2005 multilateral Hong Kong Ministerial decision on duty free quota free (DFQF) market access for products originating in Least developed countries (LDCs) on the latter's export performance. The analysis is conducted over a sample of 41 LDCs, with data spanning the period 1998-2013. The empirical analysis examines both the average effect and the short term/medium term effect. Results indicate that on average, this multilateral decision has exerted a positive effect on LDCs' performance on merchandise exports, with this average positive effect being solely driven by a positive effect on LDCs' export performance on primary products; the average effect on manufacturing exports has been statistically nil. In the short and medium term, this decision has exerted a positive effect on LDCs' merchandise export performance, as well as on the components of the latter, namely both primary product exports and manufacturing exports. However, the positive effect on primary product exports appears to be far higher than that on manufacturing exports. These findings have important policy implications regarding reflections on the way LDCs could utilize their policy flexibilities in the WTO Agreements to diversify their exports away from the primary sector and toward manufacturing and/or services sector.

Keywords: Multilateral Hong Kong Ministerial Decision on DFQF; Export Performance; Least Developed Countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F14 F15 F40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/144181/1/86331922X.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:zbw:wtowps:ersd201606

DOI: 10.30875/1e7af9c6-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in WTO Staff Working Papers from World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().