American trade policy towards Sub Saharan Africa –- a meta analysis of AGOA

Twelve econometric studies investigating the impact of agoa presented in this paper have reported 174 different estimates. In testing for publication bias and whether there is a genuine empirical impact of agoa we resort to a meta-analysis. The meta-analysis provides us with a formal means of testing for publication bias and an empirical effect. The result shows significant publication bias in the selected studies. However, in a few cases the test for a genuine effect is passed successfully. The results of the meta-analysis indicates that agoa increased the trade of beneficiaries by 13.2%

American trade policy towards Sub Saharan Africa –- a meta analysis of AGOA

Twelve econometric studies investigating the impact of agoa presented in this paper have reported 174 different estimates. In testing for publication bias and whether there is a genuine empirical impact of agoa we resort to a meta-analysis. The meta-analysis provides us with a formal means of testing for publication bias and an empirical effect. The result shows significant publication bias in the selected studies. However, in a few cases the test for a genuine effect is passed successfully. The results of the meta-analysis indicates that agoa increased the trade of beneficiaries by 13.2%.Trade preference regimes; African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA); Publication bias; Meta-Regression Analysis; Funnel plot; Study effect

Essays on trade preferences of the USA and exports of developing countries

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the Caribbean Basin Trade Protection Act (CBTPA) of the USA are trade preference programmes offering reduced tariffs to African countries. We investigate the impact of the preferences on the exports of the recipients in this thesis. Using annual data on mirror exports, macroeconomic, social, cultural and religious variables, we evaluate the impact of the preferences in three different ways—(1) difference-in-differences, (2) quantile and (3) matching estimators. As part of our review of the empirical evidence, we conduct a meta-analysis to summarise the quantitative AGOA literature. This is augmented with a meta-regression to investigate the presence of publication bias. In chapter 3, the first of the three empirical chapters, the question asked is, “has there been an observed increase in the exports of AGOA and CBTPA recipients to the USA compared to their exports to the rest of the world?” The identification of the impact consists of modelling the selection in exporting that occurs and accounting for the zero trade occurring at the HS-6 digit level of disaggregation. One result is that, the impact of the preference varies with the level of product aggregation. The two remaining chapters focus on the AGOA preference and is identified due to the exogenous provision of the preference. Chapter 4 adopts a matching approach while chapter 5 is based on a quantile regression. The matching estimates providing the mean impacts are negative for exports to the USA compared to the counter-factual. In Chapter 5, we show that, the impact of the preference on the recipients is unequal—oil exporters are the largest gainers. We decompose the impact by using the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found in Machado and Mata (2005) for quantile regressions. We find that, the gains to AGOA recipients are confined to the top half of the export distribution—implying that the gains from AGOA are unequal and thus heterogeneous in their impact on the recipients

American trade policy towards Sub Saharan Africa –- a meta analysis of AGOA

Twelve econometric studies investigating the impact of agoa presented in this paper have reported 174 different estimates. In testing for publication bias and whether there is a genuine empirical impact of agoa we resort to a meta-analysis. The meta-analysis provides us with a formal means of testing for publication bias and an empirical effect. The result shows significant publication bias in the selected studies. However, in a few cases the test for a genuine effect is passed successfully. The results of the meta-analysis indicates that agoa increased the trade of beneficiaries by 13.2%

The impact of trade preferences on exports of developing countries: the case of the AGOA and CBI preferences of the USA

In this paper we study the impact of AGOA and CBTPA preferences on Sub-Saharan Africa and Caribbean Basin beneficiaries respectively. The identification of the impact consists of modelling the selection in exporting that occurs and accounting for the zero trade occurring at the HS-6 digit level of disaggregation used in the paper. The AGOA impact has in the literature been found to be driven mainly by apparel and textiles and oil and energy related products. We find evidence corroborating this, we do also find a strong impact of the AGOA and CBTPA preferences for the beneficiary countries in non apparel and textile products. Another result is that the strength of the estimated impact in several cases increases with the level of product aggregation. Finally, not controlling for zero trade flows and the choice of panel data estimator significantly biases the estimated impact. A large sample size as in our case in most cases attenuates this bias and increases consistency

Is the impact of AGOA heterogeneous?

The literature reports the mean impact of trade preferences. The literature on the agoa impact is no exception. The mean impact can be sensitive to heterogeneity in the adoption of preferences by recipients. Nonetheless, the choice of countries included in the sample can play a role in determining the level of the impact. A small increase at the bottom of the distribution is more likely to present a large impact (in percentage terms) compared to the top 20\% -- 5\%. In this paper, we investigate the gains to developing countries focusing on where they lie on the export distribution. This way, heterogeneity can be controlled for and the impact at various percentiles of the distribution can be estimated. We carry out a quantile regression on a sample of countries selected by matching countries on an estimated propensity score as well as the full sample for comparison. Secondly, we decompose the impact using methodology in the spirit of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found in Machado and Mata (2005) for quantile regressions. We find that gains to agoa recipients is confined to the top 5\% of the export distribution. On the contrary the gains to the recipients from exporting to the EU is mainly at the bottom 25\% and the median. There is an unambiguous decline in their exports to the rest of the world relative to the counter-factual countries they are compared with. The decomposition exercise supports the quantile results and shows that both coefficient and the covariate differences between the two groups explain the difference in the total change at the various quantiles

A skeptics view of the AGOA preferences of the USA: A propensity score matching approach

Majority of the agoa impact literature have mainly resorted to regression analysis. In this paper, a change towards constructing a counter-factual set of countries is adopted. In doing this, the propensity score matching framework is used in estimating the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of the agoa policy on recipient countries. The results show that countries exporting to the USA did increase their shares of agoa exports while reducing their share under the most favoured nation tariffs. The exports levels on the other hand, are not significant in most cases. In comparing the shares of exports to the USA to those of the EU and rest of the world, an unambiguous decrease in the share of exports to the rest of the world is observed. However, the shares of exports to the USA and EU in most cases increased. The contribution of the paper is in providing a consistent and robust matching framework to study the agoa trade preferences

A matching approach to study the impact of agoa on Sub-Saharan African countries

The impact of the USA's agoa preferences on SSA countries is studied using a matching approach. The results indicate that agoa beneficiaries have exported less to the USA compared to their matched controls. However, this has not been the case for their exports to the EU which has seen a higher share of exports relative to the control group. In addition, the results show that, in the short--run the SSA countries reduce exports to the EU in order to take advantage of agoa. Thus, due to capacity constraints these countries switched exports from the EU to the USA market. China, OECD, European and other developed countries are excluded from the control group used in the analysis. We therefore do not expect the strengths of these economies to be driving any of our result

Is the impact of AGOA heterogeneous?

The literature reports the mean impact of trade preferences. The literature on the agoa impact is no exception. The mean impact can be sensitive to heterogeneity in the adoption of preferences by recipients. Nonetheless, the choice of countries included in the sample can play a role in determining the level of the impact. A small increase at the bottom of the distribution is more likely to present a large impact (in percentage terms) compared to the top 20\% -- 5\%. In this paper, we investigate the gains to developing countries focusing on where they lie on the export distribution. This way, heterogeneity can be controlled for and the impact at various percentiles of the distribution can be estimated. We carry out a quantile regression on a sample of countries selected by matching countries on an estimated propensity score as well as the full sample for comparison. Secondly, we decompose the impact using methodology in the spirit of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition found in Machado and Mata (2005) for quantile regressions. We find that gains to agoa recipients is confined to the top 5\% of the export distribution. On the contrary the gains to the recipients from exporting to the EU is mainly at the bottom 25\% and the median. There is an unambiguous decline in their exports to the rest of the world relative to the counter-factual countries they are compared with. The decomposition exercise supports the quantile results and shows that both coefficient and the covariate differences between the two groups explain the difference in the total change at the various quantiles

The impact of trade preferences on exports of developing countries: the case of the AGOA and CBI preferences of the USA

In this paper we study the impact of AGOA and CBTPA preferences on the African and Caribbean Basin beneficiaries respectively. Our methodology consists of modelling the selection in exporting that occurs and to account for the zero trade occurring at the HS 6 digit level of disaggregation used in the paper. The AGOA impact has in the literature been found to be driven mainly by apparel and textiles and oil and energy related products. We however, do find a strong impact of the AGOA and CBTPA preferences for the beneficiary countries