An evaluation of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade arrangement with Sub-Saharan African countries

Authors

  • Busani Moyo University of South Africa
  • Mamello Nchake National University of Lesotho
  • Blessing Chiripanhura Office for National Statistics

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13133/2037-3643/14251

Keywords:

AGOA, SSA, propensity score matching

Abstract

This paper evaluates the impact of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade arrangement on the growth of exports from Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Using several variants of propensity score matching techniques, results show that the impact of AGOA on SSA exports is generally negative and statistically significant. The same conclusion is reached using the difference in differences (DID) method. Further, descriptive statistics show that the proportions of Africa’s exports going to the EU and the US since 2011 have been declining and the export shares of the three largest exporters to the US, namely, South Africa, Nigeria and Angola, are falling.

JEL codes: F13, F14

KeywordsAGOA, SSA, propensity score matching

Author Biography

Busani Moyo, University of South Africa

I am a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of South Africa.

References

Anderson J. E. and Van Wincoop E. (2004), “Trade Costs”, Journal of Economic Literature, 42 (3), pp. 691-751.

Ashenfelter O and Card D. (1985), “Using the Longitudinal Structure of Earnings to estimate the effect of Training Programs”, The Review of Economics and Statistics 67(4), pp.648-660.

Austin P.C. (2008), “The Performance of Difference Propensity Score Methods for Estimating Relative Risks”, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 61 (6), pp. 537-545.

Baier S and Bergstrand J (2009), “Estimating the effects of Free Trade Agreements on international Trdae flows using matching econometrics”, Journal of International Economics 77(1), pp.63-76.

Brookhart M.A., Schneeweiss S., Rothman K.J., Glynn R.J., Avorn J. and Stürmer T. (2006), “Variable Selection for Propensity Score Models”, American Journal of Epidemiology, 163 (12), pp. 1149-1156.

Chintrakarn P. (2008), “Estimating the Euro Effects on Trade with Propensity Score Matching”, Review of International Economics, 16 (1), pp. 186-198.

Collier P and Gunning J.W (1999), “Why has Africa Grown So Slowly?”, The Journal of Economic Perspectives 13 (3), pp. 3-22.

Collier P. (2007), The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, New York: Oxford University Press.

Collier P and Venables A.J (2007), “Rethinking Trade Preferences: How Africa Can Diversify its Exports,” The World Economy, 30 (8), pp. 1326-1345.

Condon N and Stern M. (2011), “The Effectiveness of African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in increasing trade from Least Developed Countries, A Systematic Review”. London EPP1-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. Available at:

https://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Portals/0/PDF%20reviews%20and%20summaries/AGOA%202011Condon%20report.pdf?ver=2011-05-20-150456-597

Cooke E.F.A. (2011), “The Impact of Trade Preferences on Exports of Developing Countries: The Case of the AGOA and CBI Preferences of the USA”, MPRA Paper, no. 35058, available at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35058/2/MPRA_paper_35058.pdf.

Didia D., Nica M. and Yu G. (2015), “The Gravity Model, African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and US Trade Relations with Sub-Saharan Africa”, The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, 24 (8), pp. 1130-1151.

Di Rubbo P. and Canali G. (2008), "A Comparative Study of EU and US Trade Policies for Developing Countries: The Case of Agri-Food Products," The 12th Congress of the European Association of Agricultural Economists. Available at: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/43961/files/118.pdf

De Melo, J and Portugal-Perez A. (2013), "Preferential market access design: evidence and lessons from African apparel exports to the us and the EU," World Bank Economic Review, 28 (1), pp. 74-98.

Easterly W. (2006), “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and So Little Good”, New York: The Penguin Press.

Edwards L. and Lawrence R. (2010), “AGOA Rules: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Special Fabric Provisions”, NBER Working Paper, no. 16623, Cambridge (MA): National Bureau of Economic Research, available at https://www.nber.org/papers/w16623.pdf

Flam H and Nordström H. (2003), “Trade volume effects of the euro: Aggregate and sector estimates”, unpublished manuscript. Available at: http://www.iies.su.se/publications/seminarpapers/746.pdf

Frankel J. and Rose A. (2002), “An Estimate of the Effect of Common Currencies on Trade and Income”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117 (2), pp. 437-466.

Frazer G. and Van Biesebroeck J. (2007), “Trade Growth under the African Growth and Opportunity Act”, NBER Working Paper, no. 13222, Cambridge (MA): National Bureau of Economic Research, available at: https://www.nber.org/papers/w13222.pdf.

Greene J.E. and Khan M.S. (1990), “The African Debt Crisis”, AERC Special Paper, no. 3, Nairobi, Kenya: African Economic Research Consortium, Initiatives Publishers.

Haynes R.J. and Haykin S.M. (1991), “The United States Assistance Strategy for Africa”, in Adedeji A., Teriba O. and Bugembe P. (eds.), The Challenge of African Economic Recovery and Development (pp. 254-269), London: Frank Cass.

Helpman E., Melitz M. and Rubinstein Y. (2008), “Estimating Trade Flows: Trading Partners and Trading Volumes”, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123 (2), pp. 441-487.

International Trade Centre (2017) Trade Statistics available at: http://www.intracen.org/itc/sectors /services/tradestatistics.

Khandker S.R., Koolwal G.B. and Samad H.A. (2010), Handbook on Impact Evaluation: Quantitative Methods and Practices, Washington (DC): World Bank Publications.

Lall S. (2005), "FDI, AGOA and Manufactured Exports by a Landlocked, Least Developed African Economy: Lesotho,"

Journal of Development Studies, 41(6), pp. 998-1022.

Meyer B.D. (1995), “Natural and Quasi-Experiments in Economics”, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 13 (2), pp. 151-161. (6), pp.783-810.

Montalbano P and Nenci S. (2014), “The Trade Competitiveness of Southern Emerging Economies. A Multidimensional Approach through Cluster Analaysis”, The World Economy 37

Moyo D. (2009), Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Newgard C.D., Hedges J.R., Arthur M. and Mullins R.J. (2004), “Advanced Statistics: The Propensity Score: A Method for Estimating Treatment Effect in Observational Research”, Academic Emergency Medicine, 11 (9), pp. 953-961.

Nilsson L. (2005), “Comparative Effects of EU and US Trade Policies on Developing Country Exports”, TRADE Directorate General Working Paper, Brussels: European Commission.

Rosenbaum P.R. (2002), Observational Studies, 2nd edition, New York: Springer.

Rosenbaum P.R. and Rubin D.B. (1983), “The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects”, Biometrika, 70 (1), pp. 41-55.

Rubin D.B and Thomas N. (1996), “Matching Using Propensity Scores: Relating Theory to Practice”, Biometrics 52 (1), pp. 249-264.

Rubin D.B. (1997), “Estimating the Causal effects from large data sets using Propensity Scores”, Ann Intern Med 127(8), pp.757-763.

Rubin D.B. (2001), “Using Propensity Scores to Help Design Observational Studies: Application to the Tobacco Litigation”, Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology, 2 (3-4), pp. 169-188.

Schneidman W and Lewis Z.A. (2012), “The African Growth and Opportunity Act: Looking back, Looking forward”, Africa Growth Institute, Brookings Institution, Washington DC

Schuler M. (2015), “Overview in Implementing Propensity Score Analyses in Statistical Software”, in Pan W. and Bai H. (eds.), Propensity Score Analysis: Fundamentals and Developments (pp. 20-48), New York: Guilford.

Slottje P., Twisk J.W.R., Smidt N., Huizink A.C., Witteveen A.B., Van Mechelen W. and Smid T. (2007), “Health-Related Quality of Life of Firefighters and Police Officers 8.5 Years after the Air Disaster in Amsterdam”, Quality of Life Research, 16 (2), pp. 239-252.

Tadesse B. and Fayissa B. (2008), “The Impact of African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) on U.S. Imports from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)”, Journal of International Development, 20 (7), pp. 920-941.

United States Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration (2017), Trade Stats Express – Global Patterns of US Merchandise Trade, available at: http://tse.export.gov/tse/tsehome.aspx.

World Development Indicators (2018): Data and Statistics, available at: https://datacatalog.worldbank.org /dataset/world-development-indicators

World Economic Outlook (2017): Database, available at: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2017

Downloads

Published

2019-01-22

How to Cite

Moyo, B., Nchake, M., & Chiripanhura, B. (2019). An evaluation of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade arrangement with Sub-Saharan African countries. PSL Quarterly Review, 71(287), 389–418. https://doi.org/10.13133/2037-3643/14251

Issue

Section

Articles