IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jitecd/v24y2015i8p1130-1151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The gravity model, African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and US trade relations with sub-Saharan Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Dal Didia
  • Mihai Nica
  • Geungu Yu

Abstract

The United States of America enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in 2000 to grant sub-Saharan African countries (SSA) a preferential treatment in their exports to the USA. With this Act, most of the exports from SSA can now enter the USA duty-free, and this is expected to boost the exporting and manufacturing sectors in SSA. Hopefully, this singular act of assistance from the USA will spur entrepreneurship in SSA, thereby creating jobs and jump starting meaningful economic growth in the region. Since trade is a major catalyst in economic development, AGOA is arguably the most meaningful intervention from a developed country to an under-developed region such as SSA in recent times. Has AGOA had any impact on US trade with SSA? This paper sheds some light on this issue by examining the flow and composition of trade between the USA and AGOA countries. The analysis uses trade data (US imports) for 36 countries over 12 years. Empirical estimations based on the gravity model show that receiving AGOA status has a strong positive and significant impact on overall trade with the US. Interestingly, however, the analysis also shows a disproportionate impact of crude oil imports from the oil-producing countries of Angola, Gabon, and Nigeria, which is clearly not the intent of the Act.

Suggested Citation

  • Dal Didia & Mihai Nica & Geungu Yu, 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, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(8), pages 1130-1151, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jitecd:v:24:y:2015:i:8:p:1130-1151
    DOI: 10.1080/09638199.2014.1000942
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09638199.2014.1000942
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09638199.2014.1000942?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kinfack, Emilie & Bonga-Bonga, Lumengo, 2020. "Trade Linkages and Business Cycle Co-movement: Analysis of Trade between African Economies and their Main Trading partners," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 73(2), pages 275-306.
    2. Elwyn Davies & Lars Nilsson, 2020. "A comparative analysis of EU and US trade policies towards least developed countries and the African Growth and Opportunity Act beneficiaries," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 38(5), pages 613-629, September.
    3. Nathaniel P. S. Cook & Jason C. Jones, 2021. "The African Growth and Opportunity Act and growth in sub‐Saharan Africa: A local projection approach," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(1), pages 234-261, January.

    More about this item

    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:taf:jitecd:v:24:y:2015:i:8:p:1130-1151. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJTE20 .

    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.