Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/234180 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper No. 13/2021
Publisher: 
Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Bonn
Abstract: 
In several African regions, economic integration has successfully reduced tariff protection by freezing the opportunity to raise applied tariffs against fellow integration partners above those promised. In this paper, we examine whether the regional tariff commitments on the continent have come at the expense of adverse side-effects on the prevalence of other - nontariff - trade barriers. More specifically, regional tariff commitments have not only amplified applied tariff overhangs - the difference between Most Favoured Nation (MFN) bound tariffs and effectively applied tariffs - for African members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but have also sharply reduced their tariff policy space within Africa, thus leaving regulatory policies such as sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical barriers to trade (TBT) as two of the few legitimate options to level the playing field with market competitors. Comparing the effects of applied tariff overhangs towards all vis-à-vis African trading partners on SPS and TBT notifications of 35 African WTO members between 2001 and 2017, we find no overall relationship between tariff overhangs and import regulation in our preferred model setting. By contrast, larger tariff overhangs specific to intra-African trade relations have a significant share in increasing the probability of SPS measures and TBT. Our findings have important implications for future Pan-African integration under the recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in that success in fostering continental economic integration does not exclusively depend on the realisation of tariff liberalisation, but at the same time on a mindful coordination with non-tariff provisions.
Subjects: 
Economic integration
import regulation
non-tariff measures
tariff liberalisation
tariff overhang
trade policy substitution
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-3-96021-150-1
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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