Trade Reforms and Poverty: A Gender Welfare Impact of the ECOWAS Common External Tariffs on Households in Togo
International Journal of Food and Agricultural Economics, Forthcoming
Posted: 8 Feb 2018
Date Written: January 30, 2018
Abstract
This paper estimated the welfare outcomes of Togo’s implementation of the common external tariff of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), with particular focus on gender issue. First, we detect the induced changes in prices following the transition to the ECOWAS CET. Second, we calculated these changes in price on household welfare. Further, we will use an estimation to analyze the effects of changes in prices and income whether households (female-headed and male-headed households) live in urban or rural areas. We explore the impact of ECOWAS-TEC on households’ welfare through the remittances’ mechanism.
We found that the share of household expenditure allocated for food declined as the income level increases, in both urban and rural areas and for both male- and female-headed households. The results also denote that ECOWAS-CET has a net positive effect on consumer households in Togo. In Togo, government social transfer is pro-poor because it left the poor better off. But it benefits more to male-headed households, leaving women behind. Contrary to the theory, households leaving closer to the port city don’t observe the biggest increase in the welfare. Our analysis found that households in Lome (where the distance from the port city is zero) experienced the lowest increase in the welfare while households in Kara ( at 411 kilometers from the port) have the highest welfare score.
Keywords: CET, welfare, ECOWAS
JEL Classification: F15, H31, I31, I32, J16
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