IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/1109.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Regional Impact of Trade Liberalization on Households in Egypt, 1999-2012

Author

Listed:
  • Jérémie Gignoux

    (PSE-INRA, France)

  • Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann

Abstract

This paper assesses the impact of trade liberalization in Egypt by comparing regions more exposed to trade opening compared to regions that were less exposed. As each region in Egypt (that we define as the urban or the rural part of a governorate) specializes in different production sectors, and tariff reduction varies by sector, the impact of trade liberalization on households depends on the region they live in and the sector they source their income from. This approach is relevant in the case of Egypt, as geographical mobility across regions is small. We find that trade liberalization in Egypt at a fast pace between 1999 and 2004 has been detrimental to households, while the subsequent liberalization between 2004 and 2012 had more limited effects. Poverty has declined in Egypt but less so in regions more exposed to tariff reduction. In the latter, household income has also been reduced, especially self-employment income and wages. Unskilled wages were the most affected but less so after 2004, a possible effect of labor reform in 2003. While activity and employment rates increased on average over the period, they did significantly more for skilled individuals in regions that were more protected by trade policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Jérémie Gignoux & Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann, 2017. "The Regional Impact of Trade Liberalization on Households in Egypt, 1999-2012," Working Papers 1109, Economic Research Forum, revised 06 2017.
  • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:1109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1109.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: http://bit.ly/2sbURuM
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Petia Topalova, 2010. "Factor Immobility and Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Evidence on Poverty from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-41, October.
    2. Hasan, Rana & Mitra, Devashish & Ranjan, Priya & Ahsan, Reshad N., 2012. "Trade liberalization and unemployment: Theory and evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 269-280.
    3. Elhanan Helpman & Oleg Itskhoki & Marc-Andreas Muendler & Stephen J. Redding, 2017. "Trade and Inequality: From Theory to Estimation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(1), pages 357-405.
    4. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Shaohua Chen & Andrew Dabalen & Yuri Dikhanov & Nada Hamadeh & Dean Jolliffe & Ambar Narayan & Espen Beer Prydz & Ana Revenga & Prem Sangraula & Umar Serajuddin & Nobuo Yosh, 2016. "A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues, methodology and initial results," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 141-172, June.
    5. Eric V. Edmonds & Nina Pavcnik & Petia Topalova, 2010. "Trade Adjustment and Human Capital Investments: Evidence from Indian Tariff Reform," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 42-75, October.
    6. repec:dau:papers:123456789/1904 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Castilho, Marta & Menéndez, Marta & Sztulman, Aude, 2012. "Trade Liberalization, Inequality, and Poverty in Brazilian States," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 821-835.
    8. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg & Nina Pavcnik, 2007. "Distributional Effects of Globalization in Developing Countries," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(1), pages 39-82, March.
    9. Barbara Coello, 2009. "Exports Liberalization and Specialization in Cash Crop: Gains for Vietnamese Households?," Economie Internationale, CEPII research center, issue 118, pages 73-99.
    10. Ural Marchand, Beyza, 2012. "Tariff pass-through and the distributional effects of trade liberalization," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 265-281.
    11. Chahir Zaki, 2011. "On Trade Policies and Wage Disparity in Egypt: Evidence from Microeconomic Data," Working Papers 606, Economic Research Forum, revised 08 Jan 2011.
    12. L. Alan Winters & Antonio Martuscelli, 2014. "Trade Liberalization and Poverty: What Have We Learned in a Decade?," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 493-512, October.
    13. Porto, Guido G., 2006. "Using survey data to assess the distributional effects of trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 140-160, September.
    14. Said, Mona & Elshennawy, Abeer, 2010. "The impact of trade liberalization on manufacturing employment and wages in Egypt 1990-2007," MPRA Paper 25759, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Barbara Coello, 2009. "Exports liberalization and specialization in cash crop: Gains for Vietnamese households?," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-00813554, HAL.
    16. Rana Hendy & Chahir Zaki, 2013. "Assessing the Effects of Trade Liberalization on Wage Inequalities in Egypt: A Microsimulation Analysis," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 63-104, March.
    17. Nicita, Alessandro, 2009. "The price effect of tariff liberalization: Measuring the impact on household welfare," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 19-27, May.
    18. repec:oup:restud:v:84:y::i:1:p:357-405. is not listed on IDEAS
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5833 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Barbara Coello, 2009. "Exports liberalization and specialization in cash crop: Gains for Vietnamese households?," Post-Print hal-00813554, HAL.
    21. Chahir Zaki, 2014. "On Trade Policies and Wage Disparity: Evidence from Egyptian Microeconomic Data," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(1), pages 37-69, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antonio Martuscelli & Michael Gasiorek, 2019. "Regional Integration And Poverty: A Review Of The Transmission Channels And The Evidence," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 431-457, April.
    2. L. Alan Winters & Antonio Martuscelli, 2014. "Trade Liberalization and Poverty: What Have We Learned in a Decade?," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 493-512, October.
    3. Muendler, Marc-Andreas, 2017. "Trade, technology, and prosperity: An account of evidence from a labor-market perspective," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2017-15, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    4. Fukase, Emiko, 2013. "Export Liberalization, Job Creation, and the Skill Premium: Evidence from the US–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 317-337.
    5. Han, Jun & Liu, Runjuan & Ural Marchand, Beyza & Zhang, Junsen, 2016. "Market structure, imperfect tariff pass-through, and household welfare in Urban China," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 220-232.
    6. Kis-Katos, Krisztina & Sparrow, Robert, 2015. "Poverty, labor markets and trade liberalization in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 94-106.
    7. Ghani,Syed Ejaz & Grover,Arti & Kerr,Sari & Kerr,William Robert, 2016. "Will market competition trump gender discrimination in India ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7814, The World Bank.
    8. Erten, Bilge & Leight, Jessica & Tregenna, Fiona, 2019. "Trade liberalization and local labor market adjustment in South Africa," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 448-467.
    9. Dix-Carneiro, Rafael & Kovak, Brian K., 2019. "Margins of labor market adjustment to trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 125-142.
    10. Rafael Dix-Carneiro & Brian K. Kovak, 2017. "Trade Liberalization and Regional Dynamics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(10), pages 2908-2946, October.
    11. Hanan G. Jacoby, 2016. "Food Prices, Wages, And Welfare In Rural India," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(1), pages 159-176, January.
    12. Isis Gaddis & Janneke Pieters, 2017. "The Gendered Labor Market Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Evidence from Brazil," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 52(2), pages 457-490.
    13. Dai, Mi & Huang, Wei & Zhang, Yifan, 2021. "How do households adjust to tariff liberalization? Evidence from China's WTO accession," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    14. Simon Galle & Andrés Rodríguez-Clare & Moises Yi, 2023. "Slicing the Pie: Quantifying the Aggregate and Distributional Effects of Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(1), pages 331-375.
    15. Facchini, Giovanni & Liu, Maggie Y. & Mayda, Anna Maria & Zhou, Minghai, 2019. "China's “Great Migration”: The impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 126-144.
    16. Beyza Ural Marchand, 2019. "Inequality and Trade Policy: The Pro‐Poor Bias of Contemporary Trade Restrictions," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(S1), pages 123-152, November.
    17. Devashish Mitra, 2019. "Responses to Trade Opening: Evidence and Lessons from Asia," Working Papers id:12977, eSocialSciences.
    18. Petia Topalova, 2010. "Factor Immobility and Regional Impacts of Trade Liberalization: Evidence on Poverty from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-41, October.
    19. Pavcnik, Nina & Goldberg, Pinelopi, 2016. "The Effects of Trade Policy," CEPR Discussion Papers 11104, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Louisiana Cavalcanti Teixeira, 2020. "Trade Liberalization, Income, and Multidimensional Deprivation in Brazil," Working Papers hal-02997100, HAL.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:1109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.