IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2020-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The effect of policy uncertainty on South Africa, SADC, and beyond

Author

Listed:
  • Mustapha Douch

Abstract

The principal contribution of this paper is to investigate the relationship between policy uncertainty, caused by recent developments in international markets, and firms' trade margins for the largest economy in Africa: South Africa. In particular, using a unique database on the population of traders, we investigate the exogenous result of the Brexit referendum and assess its impact on South African exporters' and importers' participation in the global market.

Suggested Citation

  • Mustapha Douch, 2020. "The effect of policy uncertainty on South Africa, SADC, and beyond," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-59, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2020-59
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/Publications/Working-paper/PDF/wp2020-59.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Valeria Groppo & Roberta Piermartini, 2014. "Trade Policy Uncertainty and the WTO," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1437, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Aaditya Mattoo & Alen Mulabdic & Michele Ruta, 2022. "Trade creation and trade diversion in deep agreements," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(3), pages 1598-1637, August.
    3. Crowley, M. A. & Exton, O. & Han, L., 2018. "Renegotiation of Trade Agreements and Firm Exporting Decisions: Evidence from the Impact of Brexit on UK Exports," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1839, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Peter Egger & Douglas Nelson, 2011. "How Bad Is Antidumping? Evidence from Panel Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(4), pages 1374-1390, November.
    5. Carsten Eckel & J. Peter Neary, 2010. "Multi-Product Firms and Flexible Manufacturing in the Global Economy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(1), pages 188-217.
    6. Handley, Kyle, 2014. "Exporting under trade policy uncertainty: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 50-66.
    7. Alejandro G Graziano & Kyle Handley & Nuno Limão, 2021. "Brexit Uncertainty and Trade Disintegration," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(635), pages 1150-1185.
    8. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Kermani, Amir & Kwak, James & Mitton, Todd, 2016. "The value of connections in turbulent times: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(2), pages 368-391.
    9. Vandenbussche, Hylke & Zanardi, Maurizio, 2010. "The chilling trade effects of antidumping proliferation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 760-777, August.
    10. Justin R. Pierce & Peter K. Schott, 2016. "The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(7), pages 1632-1662, July.
    11. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1997. "Regional Trading Blocs in the World Economic System," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 72, October.
    12. Kalina Manova & Zhiwei Zhang, 2008. "China's exporters and importers: firms, products, and trade partners," Working Paper Series 2008-28, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    13. Osnago, Alberto & Piermartini, Roberta & Rocha, Nadia, 2015. "Trade policy uncertainty as barrier to trade," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2015-05, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    14. Beck, Thorsten & Demirguc-Kunt, Asli, 2006. "Small and medium-size enterprises: Access to finance as a growth constraint," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 2931-2943, November.
    15. Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), 2014. "Handbook of International Economics," Handbook of International Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    16. Roberts, Mark J & Tybout, James R, 1997. "The Decision to Export in Colombia: An Empirical Model of Entry with Sunk Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 545-564, September.
    17. Maya Cohen-Meidan, 2013. "The Heterogeneous Effects of Trade Protection: A Study of US Antidumping Duties on Portland Cement," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 42(4), pages 369-394, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Mustapha Douch & Terence Huw Edwards, 2022. "The bilateral trade effects of announcement shocks: Brexit as a natural field experiment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 305-329, March.

    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. Limão, Nuno & Handley, Kyle, 2013. "Policy Uncertainty, Trade and Welfare: Theory and Evidence for China and the U.S," CEPR Discussion Papers 9615, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Crowley, Meredith & Meng, Ning & Song, Huasheng, 2018. "Tariff scares: Trade policy uncertainty and foreign market entry by Chinese firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 96-115.
    3. Mustapha Douch & Terence Huw Edwards, 2022. "The bilateral trade effects of announcement shocks: Brexit as a natural field experiment," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 305-329, March.
    4. Yiping Sun & Xiangyi Li & Tengyuan Zhang & Jiawei Fu, 2022. "Does Trade Policy Uncertainty Exacerbate Environmental Pollution?—Evidence from Chinese Cities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-21, February.
    5. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2022. "Duration of WTO Membership and Investment-Oriented Remittances Flows," EconStor Preprints 251274, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    6. Rui Costa & Swati Dhingra & Stephen Machin, 2022. "New dawn fades: Trade, labour and the Brexit exchange rate depreciation," CEP Discussion Papers dp1890, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    7. Patrizia Casadei & Simona Iammarino, 2021. "Trade policy shocks in the UK textile and apparel value chain: Firm perceptions of Brexit uncertainty," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 4(2), pages 262-285, June.
    8. Piermartini, Roberta & Yotov, Yoto, 2016. "Estimating Trade Policy Effects with Structural Gravity," School of Economics Working Paper Series 2016-10, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University.
    9. Mau, Karsten, 2017. "US policy spillover(?) – China’s accession to the WTO and rising exports to the EU," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 169-188.
    10. Yu, Mingzhe & Fan, Jiachuan & Wang, Haijun & Wang, Jie, 2023. "US trade policy uncertainty on Chinese agricultural imports and exports: An aggregate and product-level analysis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 70-83.
    11. Liu Qing & Zhang Yanchao & Li Shuaihang & Li Langxing, 2021. "The Interactive Impact of Trade Policy Uncertainty and Credit Constraint Heterogeneity on Firms’ Export Margins: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Systems Science and Information, De Gruyter, vol. 9(6), pages 575-607, December.
    12. Yan Zhang, 2017. "Impact of Latin-American and Caribbean Antidumping Measures on Chinese Exports," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 97857, Inter-American Development Bank.
    13. Rosalyn Perkins & Mary Caroline Castaño & Condrad Montemayor, 2018. "Analysis of predictability and accountability transparency practices and FTA on trade growth in selected countries of the Asia-Pacific region: a descriptive-causal approach," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 7(1), pages 1-18, December.
    14. Haoyuan Ding & Bo Pu & Tong Qi & Kai Wang, 2022. "Valuation effects of the US–China trade war: The effects of foreign managers and foreign exposure," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 662-683, July.
    15. Nicolo' Tamberi, 2020. "Export-platform FDI and Brexit Uncertainty," Working Paper Series 0320, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    16. Imbruno, Michele, 2019. "Importing under trade policy uncertainty: Evidence from China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 806-826.
    17. Handley, Kyle, 2014. "Exporting under trade policy uncertainty: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 50-66.
    18. Kareem, Fatima Olanike & Martinez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada & Brümmer, Bernhard, 2016. "Fitting the Gravity Model when Zero Trade Flows are Frequent: a Comparison of Estimation Techniques using Africa's Trade Data," GlobalFood Discussion Papers 230588, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.
    19. Douch, Mustaph & Huw Edwards, T., 2021. "The Brexit policy shock: Were UK services exports affected, and when?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 248-263.
    20. Lu, Yi & Tao, Zhigang & Zhang, Yan, 2013. "How do exporters respond to antidumping investigations?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 290-300.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Brexit; policy uncertainty; Preferential trade agreements; Trade margins;
    All these keywords.

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2020-59. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.