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The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers

After more than two decades of trade liberalization, faced with deep structural problems which were exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis and culminated in the 2011 Spring Revolution and government change, in 2016 Egypt started to protect some sectors from foreign competition. This paper assesses...

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Autores principales: Giovannetti, Giorgia, Marvasi, Enrico, Vivoli, Arianna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7520513/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40888-020-00199-0
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author Giovannetti, Giorgia
Marvasi, Enrico
Vivoli, Arianna
author_facet Giovannetti, Giorgia
Marvasi, Enrico
Vivoli, Arianna
author_sort Giovannetti, Giorgia
collection PubMed
description After more than two decades of trade liberalization, faced with deep structural problems which were exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis and culminated in the 2011 Spring Revolution and government change, in 2016 Egypt started to protect some sectors from foreign competition. This paper assesses how tariff reforms during the 1998–2018 period affected the Egyptian labour market by focusing on real wages and job stability (i.e. having a permanent position). The empirical analysis is carried out on worker-level data from the available four waves of Egyptian Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), including the recently released 2018 wave. We find that higher tariff protection tends to worsen labour market conditions, both lowering real wages and decreasing the probability of finding a stable job. Furthermore, tariff changes show remarkable asymmetries. There is a negative and significant correlation between tariffs increases and real wages, while the positive impact of tariff reductions turns out to be negligible and insignificant. Our findings support the view that in Egypt protectionism hampered working conditions, contributing to inequality, while liberalizations did not improve nor deteriorate them.
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spelling pubmed-75205132020-09-28 The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers Giovannetti, Giorgia Marvasi, Enrico Vivoli, Arianna Econ Polit Original Paper After more than two decades of trade liberalization, faced with deep structural problems which were exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis and culminated in the 2011 Spring Revolution and government change, in 2016 Egypt started to protect some sectors from foreign competition. This paper assesses how tariff reforms during the 1998–2018 period affected the Egyptian labour market by focusing on real wages and job stability (i.e. having a permanent position). The empirical analysis is carried out on worker-level data from the available four waves of Egyptian Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), including the recently released 2018 wave. We find that higher tariff protection tends to worsen labour market conditions, both lowering real wages and decreasing the probability of finding a stable job. Furthermore, tariff changes show remarkable asymmetries. There is a negative and significant correlation between tariffs increases and real wages, while the positive impact of tariff reductions turns out to be negligible and insignificant. Our findings support the view that in Egypt protectionism hampered working conditions, contributing to inequality, while liberalizations did not improve nor deteriorate them. Springer International Publishing 2020-09-28 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC7520513/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40888-020-00199-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Paper
Giovannetti, Giorgia
Marvasi, Enrico
Vivoli, Arianna
The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers
title The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers
title_full The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers
title_fullStr The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers
title_full_unstemmed The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers
title_short The asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on Egyptian workers
title_sort asymmetric effects of 20 years of tariff reforms on egyptian workers
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7520513/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40888-020-00199-0
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