ABSTRACT
This research
work studies the international competitiveness of the Nigerian economy in the
global market by analyzing the relationship between trade openness and output
growth in Nigeria.
Using time-series data over the period 1970-2007, we show that output growth of
the Nigeria economy is a function of two sets of shocks; (i) external shocks
(openness and real exchange rate) and (ii) internal shocks (real interest rate
and unemployment rate). A non-monotonic and an ANCOVA econometric models are
postulated in order to capture the
structural pattern of the relationship between openness and output growth as
well as the policy effect of structural Adjustment program (SAP). The result
shows that there is an inverted U-shape (no-monotonic) relationship between
openness and output growth in Nigeria
and the optimum degree of openness for the economy is estimated to be about
67%. Also, the liberalization policy of the SAP has positive economic effect on
the output growth. The ECM reveals that 79% of the equilibrium error is being
corrected in the next period. We concluded that unbridled openness may have
deleterious effect on the real growth of output of the Nigerian economy.
CHAPTER ONE
INTROUDCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND
OF STUDY
The current period in the world
economy is regarded as period of globalization and trade liberalization. In
this period, one the crucial issues in development and international economics
is to know whether trade openness indeed promotes growth. With globalization,
two major trends are noticeable: first is the emergence of multinational firms
with strong presence in different, strategically located markets; and secondly,
convergence of consumer tastes for the most competitive products, irrespective
of where they are made. In this context of the world as a “global village”,
regional integration constitutes an effective means of not only improving the
level of participation of countries in the sub-region in world trade, but also
their integration into the borderless and interlinked global economy. (NEEDS,
2005).
Since 1950, the world economy has
experienced a massive liberalization of world trade, initially under the
auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and trade (GATT), established in
1947, and currently under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
which replaced the GATT in 1993. Tariff levels in both developed and developing
countries have reduced drastically, averaging approximately 4% and 20%
respectively, even though the latter is relatively high. Also, non-tariff
barriers to trade, such as quotas, licences and technical specifications, are
also being gradually dismantled, but at a slower rate when compared with
tariffs.
The liberalization of trade has led to
a massive expansion in the growth of world trade relative to world output. While
world output (or GDP) has expanded fivefold, the volume of world trade has
grown 16 times at average compound rate of just over 7% per annum. In fact, it
is difficult, if not impossible, to understand the growth and development
process of countries without reference to their trading performance. (Thirlwall,
2000).
Likewise, Fontagné and Mimouni (2000)
noted that since the end of the European recovery after World War II, tariff
rates have been divided by 10 at the world level, international trade has been
multiplied by 17, world income has quadrupled, and income per capita has
doubled. Incidentally, it is well known that periods of openness have generally
been associated with prosperity, whereas protectionism has been the companion
of recessions. In addition, the trade performance of individual countries tends
to be good indicator of economic performance since well performing countries
tend to record higher rates of GDP growth. In total, there is a common
perception that even if imperfect competition and second best situations offer
the possibility of welfare improving trade policies, on average free trade is
better than no trade.
From the ongoing discussion, it is
evident that trade is very important in promoting and sustaining the growth and
development of an economy. No economy can isolate itself from trading with the
rest of the world because trade act as a catalyst of growth. Thus Nigeria, being
part of the world, is no exemption. For this reason, there is a need to
thoroughly examine the nature of relationship between trade openness and output
growth in Nigeria.
1.1.2 TRADE OPENNESS AND OUTPUT GROWTH:
HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE NIGERIA
ECONOMY
Today, Nigeria is
regarded to have the largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa,
excluding South Africa.
In the last four decades there has been little or no progress realized in
alleviating poverty despite the massive effort made and the many programmes
established for that purpose. Indeed, as in many other sub-Saharan Africa countries, both the number of poor and the
proportion of poor have been increasing in Nigeria. In particular, the 1998 United
Nations human development report declares that 48% of Nigeria’s
population lives below the poverty line. According to the report (UNDP, 1998).
The bitter reality of the Nigerian situation is not just that the poverty level
is getting worse by the day but more than four in ten Nigerians live in
conditions of extreme poverty of less than N320 per capita per month, which
barely provides for a quarter of the nutritional requirements of healthy living.
This is approximately US 8.2 per month or US 27 cents per day.
Doug
Addison (unpublished) further explained that the Nigeria economy is not merely
volatile; it is one of the most volatile economies in the world (see figure 1
below). There is evidence that this volatility is adversely affecting the real
growth rate of Nigeria’s
gross domestic product (GDP) by inhibiting investment and reducing the
productivity of investment, both public and private. Economic theory and
empirical evidence suggest that sustained high future growth and poverty
reduction are unlikely without a significant reduction in volatility. Oil price
fluctuations drive only part of Nigeria’s
volatility policy choices have also contributed to the problem. Yet policy
choices are available that can help accelerate growth and thus help reduce the
percentage of people living in poverty, despite the severity of Nigeria’s
problems.
Figure 1:
growth rate of real GDP
Nigeria real GDP
Growth Rate
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During the
period 1960-1997, Nigeria’s growth rate of per capital GDP of 1.45% compares unfavorably
with that reported by other countries, especially those posted by china and the
Asian Tigers such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and south Korea, viewed in
this comparative perspective, Nigeria’s per capita income growth has been
woefully low and needs to be improved upon. (Iyoha and Oriakhi, 2002). In like
manner, ogujiuba, Oji and Adenuga (2004) wrote that the Nigerian economy has
severally been described as a difficult environment for business with a
population growth of about 3%, it has been acknowledged that the current
average output growth rate of less than 4% will see the country being poorer in
the next decade.
A study
conducted by Iyoha and Oriakhi (2002) on Nigeria’s per capita GNP from 1964
to 1997 show that it rose steadily from US$120 to US$780 in 1981. Thereafter,
it fell almost steadily to US$280 in 1997. Thus, between 1964 and 1981, income
per capita increased by 550% or at an annual average rate of 32.3% while
between 1981 and 1997, it fell by 64.1% or at an annual average rate of 4%. It
is worth noting that if income per capita had continued to increase beyond 1981
as it did before then, Nigeria’s
GDP per capita would have equaled US$1,279 in 1997. The difference between US
$280 and US$1,279, i.e, approximately, US$1,000.00, is a rough measure of the
cost to the average Nigerian of domestic macro economic policy mistakes and adverse
international economic shocks. Likewise in 1960 agricultural exports accounted
for only 2.6%. Exports of other commodities like tin and processed goods
amounted to 26.6% of total exports. By 1970 agricultural exports only accounted
for 33% of total exports while petroleum exports had started to establish
dominance by exceeding 58% of total exports. By the time the oil boom began in
earnest in 1974, petroleum exports accounted for approximately 93% of all
exports. The relative share of agricultural exports in total exports had shrunk
to 5.4% while other products accounted for the remaining 1.9%. Since 1974, with
the exception of 1978 when the relative share of petroleum in total exports has
exceeded 90%. In deed, since 1990, the relative share of petroleum in total
exports has exceeded 96%. Agricultures contribution has fluctuated between 0.5%
and 2.3% while the share of other products has fluctuated between 0.5% and
1.7%. Thus petroleum exportation has totally dominated the economy and indeed
government finances since the mid-1970s.
Meanwhile, a puzzling and disturbing
aspect of Nigeria
export boom is that the growth it generated did not seem to be lasting or to
have had a significant effect in changing the structure of the economy. For
instance, in the 1970’s there was a major increase in measured GDP but the
structure of the economy remained basically unchanged (see figure 2 below).
This led professor Yesufu (1995) to describe the Nigerian economy as one that
had experienced “growth without development’’.
Figures 2:
trend of real GDP
Year
During the period of 1970 – 1985,
import substitution industrialization (ISI) strategy was a dominant feature of
trade policy in Nigeria.
The trade policy was generally inward oriented. Under this ISI strategy,
“Infant” manufacturing industries were protected using high tariffs, import
quotas, and other trade restrictions like import licensing. Non-tariff barriers
to trade such as import prohibitions were also utilized. During this period,
trade policy was also adjusted in response to the exigencies of the balance of
payments.
Also, Nigeria was operating a fixed
exchange rate regime under which the value of the Naira was essentially tied to
US dollar and gold. It is worth noting that the trade policy pursued during
this period resulted in a rapid increase in manufacturing production and
employment, particularly during the era of the oil boom (1975 -1980) and that
led to a rise in the share of manufacturing in Gross Domestic product (GDP)
from 5.6% in 1962/63 to 8.7% in 1986. (Iyoha and Oriakhi, 2002).
In 1986, Nigeria adopted the structural
adjustment programme (SAP) of the IMF/World Bank. With the adoption of SAP in
1986, there was a radical shift from inward-oriented trade policies to out ward
–oriented trade policies in Nigeria.
These are policy measures that
emphasize production and trade along the lines dictated by a country’s
comparative advantage such as export
promotion and export diversification, reduction or elimination of import
tariffs, and the adoption of market-determined exchange rates some of the aims
of the structural adjustment programme adopted in 1986 were diversification of
the structure of exports, diversification of the structure of production,
reduction in the over-dependence on imports, and reduction in the
over-dependence on petroleum exports. The major policy measures of the SAP
were:
·
Deregulation of the exchange rate
·
Trade liberalization
·
Deregulation of the financial sector
·
Adoption of appropriate pricing policies especially
for petroleum products.
·
Rationalization and privatization of public sector
enterprises and
·
Abolition of commodity marketing boards.
However, as a result of trade liberalization gospel of the
SAP, the Nigeria
external sector really experience dramatic growth. For instance, the total
domestic exports of Nigeria
in 2006 amounted to N755141.32 million against N6621303.64 million in 2005
showing an increase of 14.10%. Domestic exports recorded negative growth rates
in 1993 (7.70%), 1994 (45.5%), 1997 (2.03%), 1998 (38.48%) and 2001 (27.06%);
while it recorded positive growth rates in other periods. The largest increase
in domestic exports was witnessed in 1995 (448.42%). Total imports (C.I.F)
stood at N2922248.46 in 2006 as against N1779601.57 million in 2005 recording
an increase of 64.20%. Total imports also recorded negative growth rates in
1994(45.72%),1998(9.41%) and 2004(18.07%) while it is positive all through
other years. The value of total merchandise trade amounted to N10477389.78
million in 2006 as against N45272.24 recorded in 1987. External trade was
dominated by domestic exports between 1987 and 2006 averaging 67.17% while imports (C.I.F)
averaged 32.82% (see figure 3 below), consequently, the trade balance was
positive between 1987 and 2006. Oil export remains the dominant of export trade
in Nigeria
between 1987 and 2006 accounting for about 93.33% of total domestic exports. On
the other hand, non oil exports accounted for a small value of 6.67% over the
same period. (NBS report, 2008).
FIGURES 3: GROWTH OF EXPORT AND IMPORT
NIGERIA IMPORT AND EXPORT
Therefore, it could be understood that
the SAP involved the deregulation and liberalization of the Nigerian economy.
This policy thrust of this program dovetailed nicely with the emerging
international orthodoxy to the effect that deregulation and economic
liberalization would yield the optimal allocation of scarce resources, reduce
waste, and promote rapid economic growth in developing countries.
Unfortunately, there has been no significant progress made in the achievement
of these objectives. The openness of the economy has significantly increased in
the past four decades, with the trade-GDP ratio rising from 31.54% in 1970, to
46.91% 1980, 57.23% in 1990, 88.16% in 1995, 85.26% in 2003 and 57.63% in 2007
(see figure 4 below) indeed, in the 1990s the ratio of trade to GDP has
averaged 70%. This extreme openness of the economy could be disadvantageous in
that it makes the country highly susceptible to internationally transmitted
business cycles, and, in particular international transmitted shocks (like
commodity price collapse). A good
example of this effect on the Nigerian economy is that of the global food
crisis of 2007 and the current global economic/financial crisis.
FIGURES 4: THE DEGREE OF OPENNESS
NIGERIA IMPORT AND EXPORT
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM
Nwafor
Manson (unpublished) not that the Nigeria’s trade policy over the
years has been determined by one/ more of the following.
·
Need to protect and stimulate domestic production
(import capital goods at low prices etc)
·
Need to ameliorate/prevent balance of payment
problems.
·
Need to boost the value of the naira
·
Need to be competitive and enjoy the benefits of openness.
·
Need to increase revenue and
·
International agreements
Today, as
part of moving with the trend of globalization and trade liberalization in the
global economic system, Nigeria
is a member of and sygnatory to many international and regional trade
agreements such as international monetary fund (IMF), world trade organization
(WTO), economic community of West African States (ECOWAS), and so many others.
The policy response of such economic partnership on trade has been to remove
trade barriers, reduce tariffs, and embark on outward-oriented trade policies.
Despite all her effort to meet up with the demands to these economic partnerships
in terms of opening up her border, according to the 2007 assessment of the
trade policy review, Nigeria’s trade
freedom was rate 56% making her the worlds 131st freest economy
while in 2009, it was ranked 117th freest economy, the country’s GDP
was also ranked 161st in the world in February, 2009. The economy
has struggled vigorously to stimulate growth through openness to trade, In
fact, it seems that as the country put greater effort to boost her economic
growth by opening up to trade with the global economy the more she becomes
worse-off relative to her trading partners in terms of country output growth.
Having
reviewed the related literatures and considering the structure of the Nigerian
economy as related to trade openness and output growth, we may then ask the
following questions.
·
Does trade openness have any significant impact on out
put growth in Nigeria?
·
Is there any other macroeconomic variable that has
significant impact on output growth in Nigeria?
·
Is there any linear association (correlation) between
trade openness and output growth in Nigeria?
·
Is there long run relationship between trade Openness
and output growth in Nigeria?
·
Has there been any significant structural change in
output growth between the pre-SAP and post-SAP period in Nigeria?
1.3 OBJECTIVES
OF THE STUDY
The broad
objective of this research work is to study, in its entirely, the relationship
between trade openness and output growth in Nigeria. This broad objective can
be subdivided into the following smaller objectives:
·
To examine the impact of trade openness on output
growth in Nigeria.
·
To identify other internal and external macroeconomic
shocks that determine output growth in Nigeria.
·
To identify other international and external macro
economic shocks that determine output growth in Nigeria.
·
To determine the linear association (correlation)
between trade openness and output growth in Nigeria.
·
To ascertain the possibility of long run relationship
between trade openness and output growth in Nigeria.
·
To determine the possibility of structural changes (if
any) in output growth between the pre-SAP and post-SAP period.
1.4 STATEMENT
OF THE RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
In view of the foregoing study, with
respect to trade openness and output growth in Nigeria, the following null
hypothesis will be tested:
Ho: Trade openness does not have any significant
impact on output growth in Nigeria.
Ho: There is no other macroeconomic
variable (internal and external) that have significant impact on output growth
in Nigeria.
Ho: There is no linear association (correlation)
between trade openness and output growth in Nigeria.
Ho: There is no long run relationship
between trade openness and output growth in Nigeria.
Ho: There is no significant structural
change in output growth between the pre-SAP and post-SAP period.
1.5 JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY
Nigeria is currently undergoing a
series of transformation in every sector of the economy, including the external
sector of the economy. The country’s economic policy in the last two decades
had one dominating theme which is an integral part of the structural Adjustment
programme (SAP) – trade liberalization. This policy was espoused on the argument
that it enhances the welfare of consumers and reduces poverty as it offers
wider platform for choice from among wider variety of quality goods and cheaper
imports. Today, there are many existing literature on the topical issue of
trade openness and growth of which some support the axiom that openness is
directly correlated to greater economic growth with the main operational
implication being that governments should dismantle the barriers to trade. The
focal point of this research work is to identify the short comings and benefits
of this argument as well as check the validity of this mainstream axiom I
Nigeria in the presence of various internal and external shocks.
1.6 SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE STUDY
The role of international trade in the
developmental journey of an economy can not be over emphasized, especially with
the current trend of globalization. Nigeria. Being part of the global
village, is not left out of this world development. This research work is
carried out to study how trade openness has influenced the performance of the Nigeria economy
through output growth in the presence of other internal and external shocks.
The findings of this research work transcend beyond mere academic
brainstorming, but will be of immense benefit to federal agencies, policy
makers, intellectual researcher and international trade think tanks that
occasionally prescribe and suggest policy options to the government on trade
related issues. It will also help the government to see the effectiveness of
trade liberalization policy on the economic growth of the nation over the
years. This research work will further serve as a guide and provide insight for
future research on this topic and related field for students who are willing to
improve it. It will also educate the public on various government policies as
related to trade issues.
1.7 SCOPE
AND LIMITATION F THE STUDY
This research work span through the
period of 1970-2007 (38 years), and is within the geographical zone of Nigeria.
Thus, it is a country-specific research. This research exercise, like every
other research work, is really a rigorous one that consumes much time and
energy especially in the area of data sourcing, data computation and modeling.
This work is relatively limited base on time and financial constraints, data
availability precision of data and data range, and methodology adopted which
could further be verified by future research. Nevertheless, the researchers
have properly organized the research so as to present dependable results which
can aid effective policy making and implementation at least for the time being.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE
REVIEW
“Openness” refers to the degree of
dependence of an economy on international trade and financial flows. Trade
openness measures the international competitiveness of a country in the global
marked. Thus, we may talk of trade openness and financial openness. Trade
openness is often measured by the ratio of import to GDP or alternatively, the
ratio of trade to GDP. It is now generally accepted that increase openness with
respect to both trade and capital flows will be beneficial to a country.
Increased openness facilities greater integration into global markets.
Integration and globalization are beneficial to developing countries although
there are also some potential risks. (Iyoha and Oriakhi, 2002). Trade openness
is interpreted to include import and export taxes, as well as explicit non
tariff distortions of trade or in varying degrees of broadness to cover such
matters as exchange-rate policies, domestic taxes and subsides, competition and
other regulatory policies, education policies, the nature of the legal system,
the form of government, and the general nature of institution and culture
(Baldwin, 2002).
2.1 THEORETICAL
LITERATURE
The issue of whether trade and
increased openness would lead to higher rate of economic growth is an age-old
question which has sustained debate between pro-traders and protectionists over
the years from classicalists like Adam Smith, John Stuart mill, to John Maynard
Keynes, Raul Prebisch, Hans Singer, Paul Krugman and many others. Theorists
from both theses have influenced policy many countries and at various stage of
development there has also been a huge policy debate about what constitute “good”
and “bad” policies for these countries, especially the developing countries
such as Nigeria
should these countries completely open up to international trade? Or should
they instead, at least temporality, protect some or all of their industries
from the world marked forces? Form arguments have been developed pro and con of
both theses. These arguments were discussed extensively by Maskus (1998) thus:
Argument One: Economies Will Grow Faster If They
Protect Domestic Industry From Import Competition
This is a general statement of the
infant-industry hypothesis”, which states that manufacturing sectors in
underdeveloped economics must be sheltered from competition in order to have
the incentive to invest capital, learn how to produce goods efficiently, take
advantage of scale economies through large scale production, and develop
innovative or distinctive products that can be sold on world markets. The
broadest application of the infant-industry argument for world markets. The
broadest application of the infant-industry argument for isolation from global
markets emerged in the widespread use of import substitution policies in
developing countries.
A policy of import substitution for
industrialization purpose (ISI) involves extensively controlling virtually all
components of the economy in order to direct resources into manufacturing. It
is an old idea, but its modern origins come from economists writing in the
1950s and 1960s (Arthur Lewis, Raul Prebish, Hans singer, Gunnar Myrdal., and others),
who claimed that developing economies faced two fundamental problems. First,
their status as primary-commodity exporters left them vulnerable to world swings
in commodity prices (e.g. oil, sugar, tin, copper, etc) and also that over a
long-run, commodity prices would decline relative to manufacturing prices and
costs of new technologies. Second, because developing countries have high
population growth rates and abundant labor supplies, it would be difficult to
absorb workers into primary production. Rather than waiting for comparative
advantage to push resources into labor-intensive manufacturing, it would be
better to force industrialization through ISI policies. Such programmes become
common in the 1950s throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East,
South Asia and Southeast
Asia; they are still much in evidence in many countries.
Policies imposed in a thorough ISI programme
include the following:
·
Escalating tariffs, or tariff rates that rise with the
stage of processing. Thus, low tariffs on primary goods, medium tariffs on
industrial inputs and machinery, and high tariffs on final goods, particularly
consumers goods such as food products, clothing, cosmetics, automobiles, and so
on. Such tariff structures established very high effective rates of protection
for final goods, meaning that auto factories and so on were strongly protected.
·
Considerable taxes on production of primary
commodities in other to push labor out of the country’s side and into the
cities for developing manufacturing. Such taxes include tariffs on imported
fertilizer price ceilings at very low rates for crops, export taxes on farm
goods, and so on. For these reason ERPs in agriculture were often strongly
negative, vastly reducing output and productivity in farming.
·
Fixing exchange rates at expensive levels (i.e.
“overvaluing” the domestic currency), again in order to discourage primary
exports and production and also to reduce the cost of imported inputs for
manufacturing sectors. Such exchange rates tended to generate large trade
deficits, forcing governments to borrow from abroad and build up debt. It also
required setting and controlling multiple exchange rates, so that capital and
input transactions could take place at cheaper rates than goods imports in
order to protect domestic industry.
·
Extensive systems of quotas and licensing for imports
and production.
·
Rigorous controls on FDI coming into the country,
requiring foreign firms to meet certain performance requirements. Also controls
on imported technologies, with governments placing restrictions on costs of
technology and under what terms it would be transferred to local firms.
·
Extensive nationalization of industry to establish
state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in key sectors, such as petroleum, steel, chemicals,
construction, banking, and airlines. These “industry champions” received
government subsides and were favored in the process of capital allocation,
typically being allowed to borrow at very low rates from state banks (usually
at negative real interest rates).
To some degree these policies successfully pushed
industrialization, but rarely of an efficient kind. Developing countries are
full of large manufacturing operations that operate at inefficiently low scales
because market sizes are small and product quality is not good enough to
penetrate export markets, which is a costly activity. These operations are
partly supported by government subsidies, generating rested interests in
keeping them going and opposing liberalization. Relative prices of goods are
heavily distorted by the various subsidies, trade restrictions, and licenses.
Other unintended effects include massive shifts of workers into the cities and
worsened sanitation and health problems.
However, the question is whether such policies have limited
growth. Evidently many other factors are at work. What seems clear is that such
countries have not performed well in terms of acquiring and improving
technologies, have lagged significantly behind in product innovation and
adaptation, have inefficient and distorted agricultural and manufacturing
sectors, and have not performed well in building human capital, physical
capital, and infrastructures. Some relevant figures are given later. Thus,
these sources of growth have likely been limited in countries pursing ISI
program.
ARGUMENT TWO: COUNTRIES WILL GROW FASTER IF THEY ARE
OPEN TO INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
This is the basic hope underlying
trade-reform programmes that involve extensive liberalization of trade and
investment barriers, unification of tariff rates and domestic tax rate, removal
of consumption and production subsidies, and deregulation of industry and
privatization of state owned enterprises. It is the essential philosophy behind
World Bank loans to facilitate restructuring and IMF lending packages that
require microeconomic structural reforms. It is also a very old idea (going back
to Adam Smith and David Ricardo at least) but its modern translation into trade
liberalization largely began with the reforms in Chile in the 1970s advocated by the
“Chicago School” of economists (e.g. Milton
Friedman, George Stigler).
A somewhat different version of this
approach is (to contrast it with ISI) called export promotion, which is the
policy followed largely by East Asian and Western countries. These approaches
are not necessarily liberal in the sense of free competition. There are many examples
of sheltered and subsidized domestic firms or industrial groupings; much of
this protection was designed to encourage infant industries to mature and
export. However, the key component of export promotion programs is not to
discourage exports, as is done under ISI programs. The basic policies under
export promotion include the following.
·
Properly valued exchange rates, meaning exchange rates
that do not discriminate between imports and exports. This is accomplished
either through flexible rates or pegged exchange rates that are allowed to move
gradually to account for inflation differences between the country in question
and major export markets. In this sense the exchange rate did not impose any
tax on exports.
·
Remove taxes on export production and, indeed make the
tax and tariff systems as neutral as possible across sectors of production.
Thus, while in most of these nations agricultural production was protected from
import competition, in manufacturing there were relatively little
discrimination across types of goods. It is for this reason that export-
promotion policies are far closer to open trade policies than are ISI policies.
There were certainly major exceptions to this rule in many export- promotion
countries, however.
·
Rather than rely largely on import protection to
promote infant industries, some active forms of export promotion in
manufacturing and high-tech sector were taken, including favorable allocation
of loans and subsides and rebates of import tariff paid on imported industrial
inputs.
·
Recognizing that exporting is harder than cutting off
import because export require improving levels of quality and considerable
foreign marketing cost, East Asia firms have
emphasized quality control and access to foreign technology on favourable
terms. Government have supported this by
ensuring strong public educational effort, investments in infrastructure for
export, and technology transfer policies that attempted to force inward
technology flows at cheap price.
Recent problems in some countries (especially
Asian countries) indicate that while export promotion strategies may have
contributed to growth, they ultimately cause serious problems of over
production (excess capacity) relative to the economy’s ability to consume
commodities. (Maskus, 1998).
The World Bank favors lifting the
protectionist measures that have locked low income countries out of rich-
country export market infact most international bodies (WTO,IMF World Bank etc)
strongly support the case for trade openness and financial liberalization when setting up programmes for
developing countries or when multilateral meetings occur. Some of the arguments
put forward in favor of increased openness to trade include the following:
·
Specialization: Gains from
specialization in the good in which the country has a comparative advantage
such as productivity gains, lower costs of production etc.
·
Variety: Greater
variety of goods available to consumers thus increasing the consumer surplus
and satisfying the consumers “demand of difference”.
·
Increasing
Returns: Economies of scale justify any market enlargement. However,
conclusions are quite ambiguous. For instance the gain is by large dependent of
the process of firms’ issue. A fixed market structure inhibits such gains in
the many firms complete specialization scheme of monopolistic competition. In
the same way, imposing consumers to buy a greater quantity of domestic products
can be optimal. Domestic firms increase their output and achieve economies of
scale, while the variety is not reduced. Notwithstanding such argument
economies of scale are generally referred to as a key objective of integration
policies.
·
Pro-competitive
effect: When an economy is open, there will be more intense
competition which obliges local firms to operate more efficiently than under
protection. There will also be drive for innovation and efficiency in
production in a smaller of goods. The country Can thus compete internationally.
·
Positive
Externality: The technology is spread over the boundaries through trade
and open countries benefit a better access to a world-wide basket of
technology. Also, there will be Adoption of sound policies to make sure the
country is attractive to investors: trade openness acts as a watch dog for
politicians as bad economic performances are blamed on them. Good governance
should thus be fostered.
On the
other hand, some arguments were put forward by protectionist against trade
openness Apoteker and Crozet (2003) have put forward five reasons that can at
least under line the potential risks in opened trade.
·
Fluidity: All products do not have the same fluidity,
meaning that some may be easily relocated while some others are stickier and
cannot be as easily moved.
·
Multiple
Comparative Advantages: As many countries with similar resources are opening
up to trade, they bring at the same time their same comparative advantage on
the market. This will create an excess supply of that product and its world
price will decrease, thus harming all the providers.
·
Instability
as regards Financial Volatility: Implementing financial
liberalization implies allowing financial flows to freely move in or out of a
country. However, in a country which lacks political credibility or monetary
strength and power, capital mobility and volatility can make economic policies
useless, thus preventing a country from using fiscal or monetary tools to try
to solve domestic economic problems. This means greater dependence on the
international environment.
·
Investor
Size versus Market Size: If concentration on a small market is high, the issue
of market efficiency becomes critical. Indeed if one of the large and few
investors on a small market withdraw its funds, it can threaten the whole
market equilibrium, and even create panic among other investors without any
fundamental” reasons behind it.
·
Time Frame: A
country’s development process is a long-term one, while financial investors
usually have a short-term approach. Thus there are potential conflict of
interest between public authorities and private investors/companies, which can
be harmful for development goals.
The unananimous agreement on the beneficial effects on growth
and development of trade liberalization goes back to the emergence of the Washington consensus in
the early 1980s. The consensus emerged in response to economic crisis affecting
most developing countries at the time, triggered by the debt crisis.
Nonetheless long-term economic growth is generally seen as being dependent on
openness to trade. But, literature on trade theory and policy has since the
time of Adam Smith debated whether openness and trade liberalization provide
the necessary ingredient for economic growth (miller and Upadhya, 2000). Thus,
in order to effectively understand the relationship between trade openness and
output growth we need to review and understudy the trade theory, the theory of
customs union and free trade areas and models of exported growth.
THEORY OF TRADE
The doctrine that trade enhances
welfare and growth has a long and distinguished ancestry dating back to Adam
Smith (1723-90). In his famous book, and inquiry into nature and causes of the
wealth of nations (1776), Smith stressed the importance of trade as a vent for
surplus production and as a means of widening the market thereby improving the
division of labor and the level of productivity. He assert that “between
whatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two
distinct benefits from it. It carries the surplus part of the produce of their
land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return
something else for which there is a demand. It gives value to their
superfluities, by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy part of
their wants and increase their enjoyments.
By means of it, the narrowness of the
labour market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch
of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection. By opening
a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may
exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive
powers and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase
the real revenue of wealth and society”. (Thirl Wall, 2000). We may summarize
the absolute advantage trade theory of Adam Smith, thus, countries should
specialize in and export those commodities in which they had an absolute
advantage and should import those commodities in which the trading partner had
an absolute advantage. That is to say, each country should export those
commodities it produced more efficiently because the absolute labour required
per unit was less than that of the prospective trading partners. (Appleyard and
Field, 1998).
In the 19th century, the
Smithian trade theory generated a lot of arguments. This led to David Ricardo
(1772-1823) to develop the theory of comparative advantage and showed
rigorously in his principles of political economy and taxation (1817) that on
the assumptions of perfect competition and the full employment of resources,
countries can reap welfare gains by specializing in the production of those
goods with the lowest opportunity over domestic demand, provided that the
international rate of exchange between commodities lies between the domestic
opportunity cost ratios. These are essentially static gains that arise from the
reallocation of resources from one sector to another as increased
specialization, based on comparative advantage, takes place. These are the
trade creation gains that arise within customs to trade are removed between
members, but the gains are once-for-all. Once the tariff barriers have been
removed, and no further reallocation takes place, the static gains are
exhausted. The static gains from trade stem from the basic fact that countries
are differently endowed with resources and because of this the opportunity cost
of producing products varies from country to country. Opportunity
cost is measured by the marginal rate of transformation between one good and
another, as given by the slope of the production possibility curve; that is, by
how much one good has to be sacrificed in order to produce another. The law of
comparative advantage states that countries will benefit if they specialize in
the production of those goods for which the opportunity cost is low and
exchange those goods for other goods, the opportunity cost of which is higher.
That is to say, the static gains from trade are measured by the resource gains
to be obtained by exporting to obtain imports more cheaply in terms of
resources given up, compared to producing the goods oneself.
In other words, the static gains from
trade are measured by the excess cost of import substitution, by what is saved
by not producing the imported good domestically. The resource gains can then be
used in a variety of ways including increased domestic consumption of both
goods (Thirl Wall, 2000).
On the other hand, the dynamic gains from
trade continually shift outwards the whole production possibility frontier of
countries if trade is associated with more investment and faster productivity
growth based on scale economies, learning by doing and the acquisition of new
knowledge from abroad, particular through foreign direct investment. The
essence of dynamic gains is that the shift outwards the whole production
possibility frontier by augmenting the availability of resources for production
through increasing the productivity of resources and increasing their quantity.
One of the major dynamic benefits of trade is that export markets widen the
total market for a country’s producers. If production is subject to increasing
returns, export growth becomes a continual source of productivity growth. There
is also a close connection between increasing returns and the accumulation of
capital. For a small country with no trade there is very little scope for large
scale investment in advanced capital equipment; specialization is limited by
the extent of the market. But if a poor country can trade, there is some
prospect of industrialization and of dispensing with traditional methods of
production. It is the dynamic gains from trade that are focused on in modern
trade theory such as the Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory.
2.1.2 THEORY OF CUSTOMS
UNIONS AND FREE TRADE AREAS
Since the end of the World War II,
there had been several attempts to promote trade through the creation of
international and regional trade agreements in the form of customs unions and
free trade areas. Free trade area is a form of economic union in which all
members of the group remove tariffs on each others products, while at the same
time each member retain its independence in establishing trading policies with
non-members.
In other words, the members of a free
trade area can maintain individual tariffs and other trade barriers on the
outside world. That is to say, in a free trade area, barriers to trade are
brought down within the area, but there is no common external tariff. Also,
free trade areas create trade, but the extent of trade diversion is likely to
be much less, with the presumption that on narrow economic grounds free trade
areas are superior.
On the other hand, a customs union is
a form of economic integration in which all tariffs are removed between members
and the group adopts a common external commercial policy toward non-members.
Furthermore, the group acts as one body in the negotiation of all trade
agreements with non-members. The existence of the common external tariff takes
away the possibility of transshipment by non-members. Customs unions create
trade, but also divert it from lower cost suppliers to higher cost suppliers
within the union. Thus, the question is whether the benefits of trade creation
exceed the costs of trade diversion.
Apart from trade creation and trade
diversion, customs unions may also have other important effects associated with
the enlargement of the market which are neglected by the static analysis.
Firstly, the larger market may generate economies of scale. Secondly,
integration is likely to promote increased competition which is likely to
affect favorably prices and costs, and the growth of output. Thirdly, the
widening of markets within a customs union is likely to attract international
investment. Producers will prefer to produce within the union rather than face
a common external tariff from outside. Finally if the world supply of output is
not infinitely elastic, there are terms of trade effects to consider.
Specifically if there is trade diversion, the world price of the good will
fall, moving the terms of trade in favor of the customs union. This term of
trade effect represents a welfare gain which may partly off set the welfare
loss of trade diversion.
The two forms of economic integration
discussed above are likely to be interior to a policy of unilateral tariff
reductions, and therefore need to be justified on other economic or
non-economic grounds. Thus, De Melo, Panagariya and Rodick (1993) suggest three
channels through which regional integration could alter economic outcomes for
the better.
Firstly,
a regional trade agreement entails a larger political community which might
lessen the scope for adverse discretionary actions by governments, and
particular restrict the power of growth-retarding political interest groups,
unless politically powerful lobbies can form alliances across countries.
Secondly, when a regional institution
is set up ab nitio, better choices may be made than at the nation-state level,
where policy-makers have to contend with existing institutions that accommodate
factional interests. Thirdly, when participating countries have different
economic institutions, policy-making at the regional levels will entail a
compromise between those institutions and may lead to a superior outcome for at
least some member countries. For example, if a customs union adopts as its
common external tariff, the average tariff of the union, at least some members
must benefit. Nevertheless, the World Bank is generally hostile to regional
trading blocs, despite the potential political –cum-economic benefits, because
of their relatively inward-looking nature. (Thirlwall, 2000).
2.1.3 MODELS
OF EXPORT –LED GROWTH
The three main models of export-led
growth that will be discussed are the neo classical supply –side model, the
balance of payments constrained model which is also known as the Hicks
super-multiplier model, and the virtuous circle model.
The Neoclassical Supply-Side Model: This model
shows the relationship between exports and growth, and assumes that the export
sector confers externalities on the non export sector, because of its exposure
to foreign competition; and secondly that the export sector has a higher level
of productivity than the non export sector. Thus, the share of exports in GDP,
and the growth of exports, matter for overall growth performance. Feder (1983)
was the first to prove a formal model of this type to explain the relation between
export growth and output growth. The output of the export growth sector is
assumed to be a function of labour and capital in the sector, the output of the
non-export sector is assumed to be a function of labour, capital and the
output of the export sector (so as to
capture externalities), and the ratio of respective marginal factor
productivities in the two sector is assumed to deviate from unity by a factor
d. Feder tests the model taking a cross section of 19 semi industrialized
countries and a larger sample of 31 countries over the period1964-73. He finds
that there are substantial differences in productivity between the export and
non-export sector are also evidence of externalities. The externalities
conferred are part of the dynamic gains from trade which are associated with
the transmission and diffusion of new ideas from abroad relating to both
production techniques and efficient management practices. The cross-section
work on exports and growth assumes, however that all countries in a sample
conform to the same model, with the same intercept and coefficient parameters
linking exports and growth. In practice, this is highly unlikely to be the
case; and it transpires, in fact, that when time series studies are conducted
for individual countries, the relation between exports and growth is much
weaker.
BALANCE OF PAYMENTS CONSTRAINED GROWTH MODEL:
No country can grow faster than rate
consistent with balance of payments equilibrium on current account in the long
run, unless it can finance ever-growing deficits which, in general, it cannot. Ratios
of deficit to GDP of more than 2%-3% to make the international financial
markets nervous and all borrowing eventually have to be repaid. A country’s
balance of payments equilibrium growth rate can be modeled by stating the
balance of payments equilibrium condition specifying multiplicative (constant
elasticity) import and export demand functions in which imports and exports are
a function of domestic and foreign income, respectively, and of relative prices,
and substituting these functions in the equilibrium conditions. Since imports
are a function of domestic income, the model can be easily solved for the
growth of income consistent with balance of payments equilibrium.
Nureldin-Hussain (1995) applied this model to Africa
to contrast the experience of slow growing African countries with the faster
growing countries of Asia over the period
1970-90. He uses an extended model which also includes terms of trade effects
and the effects of capital flows. The major explanation of the difference in
growth rates between Africa and Asia turns out to be the difference in the growth of
exports. He finds that the average growth of the African countries, excluding
oil exporters, was 3.4 percent per annum, and of the Asian countries 6.6
percent. The contribution of export growth in Africa
was 1.99 percentage points and in Asia 5.91
percentage points.
Differences in capital flows and terms
of trade movements made only a minor contribution to growth rate differences.
Thus, he concluded that exports are unique as a growth inducing force from the
demand side because it is the only component of demand that provides foreign
exchange to pay for the import requirements for growth. In this sense, it
allows all other components of demand to grow faster in a way that
consumption-led growth or investment-led growth does not.
Virtuous Circle Models of Export-Led Growth
There is need to recognize the fact
that export and growth may be interrelated in a cumulative process. This raises
the questions of casualty; but more importantly, such model provide and
explanation of why growth and development through trade tends to be
concentrated in particular areas of the world, while other regions and
countries have been left behind. These models provide a challenge to both
orthodox growth theory and trade theory which predict the long run convergence
of living standards across the world. A simple cumulative model, driven by
exports as the major component of autonomous demand, is to assume that (i) output
growth is a function of export growth, (ii)export growth is a function of price
competitiveness and foreign income growth, (iii) price competitiveness is a
function of wage growth and productivity growth, and (iv) productivity growth
is a function of output growth (this is referred to as verdoorn law which works
through static and dynamic returns to scale, including learning by doing). It
is this induced productivity growth that makes the model circular and
cumulative’ since if fast output growth (caused by export growth) induces
faster productivity growth this makes
goods more competitive and therefore induces faster export growth. The verdoorn
relation not only makes the model ‘circular and cumulative’; but also gives
rise to the possibility that once an economy obtains a growth advantage it will
tend to keep it. Suppose, for example, that an economy obtains an advantage in
the production of goods with a high income elasticity of demand in world
markets, such as high technology goods, which raises its growth rate above
other countries. Through the verdoorn effect, productivity growth will be
higher and the economy will retain its competitive advantage in these goods,
making it difficult, without protection or exceptional industrial enterprise,
to establish the same commodities.
In such a cumulative model, it is the
difference between the income elasticity characteristics of exports (and
imports, if balance of payments equilibrium is a requirement as argued earlier)
that is the essence of divergence between industrial and agricultural
economies, or between centre and periphery. (Thirl Wall, 2000).
From the ongoing, we can conclude that
trade liberalization does not necessarily imply faster export growth, but
impractical the two appear to be highly correlated. Impact of the
liberalization on economic growth probably works mainly through improving
efficiency and stimulating exports which have powerful effects on both supply
and demand within an economy. There are several different measure of trade
liberalization or trade orientation, and all studies seem to show a positive
effect of liberalization on economic performance. Likewise
there are several different studies of the relation between exports and growth
and the evidence seem over whelming that the two are highly correlated in a
causal sense, but the relative importance of the precise mechanisms by which
export growth impacts on economic growth are not always easy to discern or
qualify.
2.2 EMPIRICAL
LITERATURE
The
relationship between trade openness and growth is a highly debated topic in the
growth and development literature, yet this issue is far from being resolved.
There is a long history of research, both theoretical and empirical, that
provides at least an answer to the question: does openness to trade result in
the growth of output (say, GDP)? But currently there is no consensus, either
empirically to theoretically, on the nature of the relationship between trade
openness and output growth. In fact, this is because the mechanisms behind it are
not well understood. The existing empirical literature however does not provide
clear evidence on relationship between trade openness and growth. Many studies
provide evidence that increasing openness has a positive effect on GDP growth.
On the other hand some studies report that it is difficult to find robust
positive relationships or even that there is negative relationship between
openness and growth. Some studies, among other Rodriguez and Rodrik (1999) and
Rodriguez (2006), critically argue that trade policy variables are mostly
uncorrelated with growth, while the trade shares can correlate with income
levels and growth rates. But the complexity of links of causality and
endogeneity among trade shares, growth and other sources of growth make a
difficulty to define a strong effect of openness on economic growth.
Theoretical growth studies suggest very complex and different relationships
between openness and growth and the empirical evidence is not unambiguous. The
growth theory supposes that “a country’s openness to world trade improves
domestic technology, and hence an open economy grows faster than a closed economy through its impact on
technological enhancement” (Jin, 2006). Harrison
(1996) asserted that openness to trade provides access to imported inputs,
which embody new technology, increases the size of the market faced by the
domestic producers, which raises the return to innovation, and facilitates a
country’s specialization in research intensive production.
In line with potential dynamic gains
of trade openness, most early empirical studies have examined a set of trade
openness measures and with their
correlation with each other and with economic growth and found a clear positive
link. For example, Harrison (1996) looked at a number of openness indicators
that turned out to have a positive ‘association’ with economic growth and
produced evidence in support of bi-directional casualty between openness (trade
share) and economic growth. Recent research, however, has questioned the
robustness of the relationship. For instance, Harrison
and Hanson (1999) show that the often quoted Sachs and Warner (1995) openness
and growth link as claimed.
Rodriguez and Rodrik (1999) confirm
the Harrison –Hanson critique and argued that
much of the work to correlate trade openness and economic growth has been
plagued with subjective and collinear measures of openness that, though
positively related with economic growth, arrive at their conclusion through
problematic econometric methodologies. Harrison (1996) and Pritchett (1996)
show that the various measure of trade openness tend to be only weakly
correlated and are often of the wrong sign.
In general, empirical studies suffer
from a number of short comings, and as a result they have not resolved the
questions surrounding the correlation between openness and growth. Baldwin (2000) offers explanation for the differences
among researchers of the openness growth nexus. According to him, while
econometric analyses based on quantitative data are limited by the scope and
comparability of available quantitative data, differences in what investigators
regard as appropriate econometric models and tests for sensitivity of the
results to alternative specifications that may be based in part on the personal
policy predilections of authors and can also result in significant differences
in the conclusions reached under such quantitative approaches. If these studies
used measures that were even slightly correlated, then empirical literature
together could be taken as proof of a positive relation between openness and
growth. Baliamoune-lutz and Ndikumana (2007) observed that, from a
methodological stand point, the weak link between trade liberalization and
growth may be attributed to measurement imperfections: the indicators used in empirical
analysis may not capture the true essence of openness. Indeed, due to lack of
data on indicators of trade openness as a policy empirical studies (as this one
does) resort to measures of trade outcomes i.e. trade volume, as proxies for
trade openness it is assumed that positive trade outcomes are an indication of
a policy environment that is at least not anti-trade. Moreover, a high trade
volume indicates exposure to international markets with the associated benefits
(e.g. technological transfer) which openness policies seek to achieve. Thus, to
some extent trade outcomes do carry some indication of the effects of trade
liberalization. Nonetheless, results from analyses using trade volume as a
measure of trade openness have to be interpreted consciously. Indeed, variations in the volume of trade do
not always reflect actual government policies that promote or hinder trade. For
instance, fluctuations in commodity prices result in changes in trade flows
even in the absence of shifts in trade policy.
The weak empirical evidence on the
link-between trade liberalization and growth can also be due to problems of
misspecification. In particular, the effects of trade liberalization may
materialize only with a lag. In the short run, liberalization may have negative
effects, especially by undermining domestic production because of competitive
import, retarding growth (Mukhopadhyay 1999). Hence, to the extent that these
negative short-run effects and the expected delayed positive effects occur
consecutively, growth would exhibit a J-curve of response to trade openness
(Greenaway etal 2002). Therefore, empirical studies may yield inconclusive and
even misreading results if these dynamic and counter balancing effects are not
fully taken into account.
Another explanation relates to the
structure of trade. Whether a country benefits from trade liberalization or not
in terms of growth depends on the composition of trade. Mazumdar (1996)
hypothesized that the composition of trade determines the strength of the engine
of growth.” Indeed lower and Van Den Berg (2003) final evidence supporting the
view that countries that import capital goods and export consumer goods growth
faster than those that export capital goods. The evidence suggests that African
countries and developing countries in general would benefit from trade most by
promoting exports of labour-intensive goods and services while encouraging
imports of capital goods. (Lopez 1991). This implies that the current export
boom which is driven by capital-intensive growth that is sustainable,
especially because of the low gains in employment creation and limited spill
over effects on non-oil sectors.
Dollar (1992) brought an important
contribution to the trade and growth debate. The author defines openness as the
combination of two diversions:
i. A low level of protection, hence of
trade distortions and
ii. A stable real
exchange rate so that incentives remain constant over time.
From that very definition, follow two
measures openness: a trade distortion index, and a real exchange rate
variability index. The distortion index measures the deviation from the law of
one price after controlling for the impact of non-tradable. The variability index
captures the variance of the real exchange rate. The author considers a sample
of 95 countries over the period 1976 -1985 and regresses average per capital
growth upon his openness indexes and the average investment rate. Both the
distortion index and the variability index are significantly negatively
correlated with growth and the investment rate comes out with a significantly
positive coefficient.
Dow Rick (1994) tests whether trade
openness affects output growth and /or investment. He considers a sample of 74
countries over the period 1960-1990. As openness indicator, the author
considers the residuals of an OLS cross-country regression of the average trade
intensity upon a constant and average population. In a second stage, the author
runs cross-country OLS regressions of average per capita GDP growth upon the
average investment rate, the initial GDP level and his openness indicator. The
coefficient on openness is significant and positive. More over, dropping the
investment rate considerably lowers the overall fit of the model but enhance
the coefficient on openness, which according to the author “suggests that
openness works partly through increased investment rates”.
In a third stage, the author computes
decade averages for his variables and turns to panel data techniques, gauging
that such techniques “enable some control for time invariant country-specific
factors such as institutional arrangements that might be correlated with the
explanatory variables”. The author uses labour productivity growth as dependent
variable and estimates both fixed-effects and random-effects models. He reports
that the coefficient on openness is still significant and positive, but its
point estimate is much lower than in the OLS specification. In a fourth set of
regressions, the author also considers growth in openness instead of openness
itself.
The author interprets this as
reflecting the fact that “static efficiency effects of trade liberalization are
negligible for countries with well-developed markets”. Finally, in its
conclusions, the author cautions that his results, showing the beneficial effects
of increased openness, hold on average, but are not a universal truth, valid
always and every where.
In particular, he stresses that “trade
liberalization can indeed stimulate growth in the aggregate world economy.
Whilst trade may have such positive effects for some countries, it may
conversely lock in other countries into a pattern of specialization in
low-skill, low-growth activities.”
Sachs and Warner (1995) brought a
seminal contribution to that literature. Their central hypothesis is that some
developing countries fail to grow rapidly enough as to converge because they
are simply not open to trade. In their own wards: “convergence can be achieved
by all countries, even those with low initial level of skill, as long as they
are open and integrated in the world economy”. To check their hypothesis, the
author first carefully, build and discuss an openness measure. Building upon a
sample of 135 countries over the period 1970-1990, they construct and openness
dummy variable that is zero if any of the 5 following conditions is true:
·
Non-tariff barriers covering 40% or more of trade
·
Average tariff rate above 40%
·
Black market premium above 20%
·
The economy is ruled by a socialist system, or
·
There is a state monopoly on exports.
Otherwise,
if none of these 5 conditions is fulfilled, the openness dummy is one. The
authors first divide their countries sample into open ones and closed ones, and
show that closed countries have grown at about the same rate (essentially about
0.7% a year), no matter whether they are developed or not. By contrast, open
developing countries have grown much faster than their developed counter parts
(4.49% versus 2.29%). Going beyond these stylized facts the authors re-do the
same regressions as in Barro (1991) and add their openness dummy to them
without the dummy, the results are sensibly the same as in Barro (1991). After
adding the openness dummy in the regresses list, it appears its coefficient is
highly significant. The points estimates suggest that open economies grow on
average 2.45% faster than closed ones.
Moreover,
educational attainment variables become even less significant than in Barro
(1991), which leads the authors to think that “….growth rate over this period
was determined less by initial human capital levels than by policy choices”.
They also address a specialization-related issue. Specifically, they test
whether trade openness condemns raw materials exporters to
non-industrialization and whether closed trade promotes industrial exports in
the long run. To do this, they regress the change in the share of primary
exports more rapidly from being primary-intensive to manufactures-intensive
exporters. The difference in speed of adjustment is statistically significant”.
Harrison (1996) starts from the judgment that “it should be
evident that no independent measures of so-called ‘openness’ is free from
methodological problem”. Therefore, to make her point, she collects as many
different openness indicators as she can, about 7 of them, and she checks the
consistency of the results across all these indicators. She uses various
samples, whose time spans range from 1960-1998 to 1978-1987,and the country
coverage varies from 51 to 17.she first runs typical cross-country growth
regressions. It appears that only one measure of openness out of 7, namely the
black market premium, has a significant impact on growth. To explain this weak
result the author argues that a pure cross-section
specification, based upon long-run averages, is not an adequate one. Indeed,
though the use of long run averages appears as the most natural way to capture
the determinants of long-run growth, they may also hide significant variations
in individual countries performances and policies over time. To test this idea, the author re-does her
regressions using annual data for the same variables. She uses a panel
fixed-effects specification to take into account unobserved country specific
differences in growth rates. Results show a stronger link between openness and
growth since 3 indicators become significant at the conventional 5% level. The
author next argues that such a yearly frequency is too high if one is
interested in long-run growth, since results may be affected by short-term
conjectural, variations. She therefore considers a third- “intermediate”- specification,
based on five-year averages and reports that, again 3 indicators come out with
a significant coefficient. The message from these results, as the author
states, is that “the choice of the time period for analysis is critical”.
However, an interesting regularity appears across all specifications: When
openness is significant; it is always in the sense that greater openness is
associated with higher growth.
Edwards
(1998) also uses an important number of openness indexes to investigate the
trade and growth relationship. He considers a sample of 93 advanced and
developing countries, and estimates a growth equation with a panel data random
effects model. From that model, he computes factor shaves, which are then used
to get TFP estimates. Concentrating on a cross-section of 1980s averages, TFP
growth is finally regressed upon initial income level, initial human capital
level, and no less than 9 openness indicators, each one of them in turn. The
author reports that “in all but one of the 18 equations the estimated
coefficient on the openness indicator has the expected sign and in the vast
majority of cases it is significant”. Moreover, the coefficient on initial
human capital is always significant and positive. Regarding the initial income
level, the coefficient is always negative and in 16 cases out of 18, it is
significant though very low, which can be interpreted as evidence in favor of
conditional convergence. To summarize, the authors concludes that his results “are
quite remarkable, suggesting with tremendous consistency that there is a
significantly positive relationship between trade openness and growth”.
An
important paper that is able to cast serious doubts about the consistency of
the trade-growth relationship is the one by Rodriguez and Rodrik (1999). These
authors consider a series of previous research results, among which Dollar
(1998). Sachs and Warner (1995), and Edwards (1998). The re-do the computations
in these papers, but slightly change the specifications (through the addition
of some dummies, e.g.), add newly available data to the sample, or slightly
change the estimation methods. They are able to demonstrate a fundamental lack
of robustness of the results in the paper they reviewed.
Frankel and
Romer (1999) claim that openness, as measured by the ratio of total trade to
GDP, should not be used as explanatory variable in the growth regressions. The
trade ratio, the authors argue, is endogenous, and needs to be instrumented. To
construct their instrument, the authors first argue that “as the literature on
the gravity model of trade demonstrates, geography is a powerful determinant of
bilateral trade. And they claim this is also true for total trade. Moreover,
geography is completely exogenous. Therefore, the authors consider a database
of bilateral trade between 63 countries for 1985 and they regress bilateral
trade upon purely geographical indicators. For each country, the fitted values
of trade are aggregate over all partners, and this aggregate is finally turned
into an “ideal” trade share that can be used as an instrument for the observed
one. The authors then estimate growth equations for a cross-section of 150
countries in 1985. They report a substantial impact of trade openness on income
growth: increasing the trade share by 1% should raise income by between 0.5%
and 2%. These findings are robust to various changes in specifications. The
results also suggest that, controlling for openness; larger countries tend to
experience higher growth rates, which could simply reflect that citizens living
in larger countries engage more in within country trade.
Baldwin and
Sbergani (2000) argue that the reason why researchers failed to find a robust
relationship between trade and openness is because that relationship is
fundamentally non linear and non-monotonic. They raise the point that the
fundamental engine of growth is human and physical accumulation, and that the
link between capital accumulation and trade barriers is, in nearly all models,
non linear and often even non-monotonic. They provide a formal 2x2x2 dynamic
model with imperfect competition that gives rise to (i) all-shaped relationship
between ad-valorem tariffs and growth and (ii) a bell-shaped relationship
between specific tariffs and growth. This model is then confronted to the data,
i.e. for a variety of openness indicators (actually, 10 of them are
considered), a quadratic model is estimated. It turns out that, in this new
specification, for 6 of the 10 proxies both the linear and the quadratic terms
are significant individually. The authors conclude that: “allowing for
non-linearity does have a big empirical impact”.
A number of
other studies have looked at the relationship between average tariff rates and
growth. Lee (1993), Harrison (1996) and Edwards (1998) found negative relationship
between the tariff rates and growth. The studies of Edwards (1992), Sala-i-
Martin (1997) and Clemens and Williamson (2001) conclude that the relationship
is weak. Rodriguez and Rodrick (1999) tried to replicate the result of Edwards
(1998) and found that average tariff rates had a positive and significant
relationship with total factor productivity (TFP) growth for a sample of 43
countries over the period 1980-1990.
In a recent
study Vanikkaya (2003) used a large number of openness measure for a cross-section
of countries over the last three decades. His analysis found a significant
positive correlation between trade shares and growth. However, this study
observed that different measures of trade barriers are positively associated
with growth in the less developed countries. In recent empirical studies, one
or more of the following indicators of openness in the table below are used:
Measure
|
Definition
|
Trade dependency ratio
|
The ratio of exports and import to GDP
|
Growth rate of exports
|
The growth rate of exports over the specified
period
|
Tariff Averages
|
A simple or trade-weighted average of tariff
levels.
|
Collected Tariff Ratios
|
The ratio of tariff revenues to imports.
|
Coverage of Quantitative Restrictions
|
The percentage of goods covered by quantitative
restrictions.
|
Black market premium
|
The black market premium for Foreign exchange, a
proxy for the overall degree of external sector distortions.
|
Trade Bias Index
|
The extent to which policy increases the ratio of
importable goods’ prices relative to exportable goods prices compared to the
same ratio in world markets.
|
Sachs And Warner Index
|
A composite index that uses several trade-related
indicators tariffs, quota coverage, black
market premiums, social organization and the existence of export marketing
boards.
|
Learner’s Openness Index
|
An index that estimates the difference between the
actual trade flows and those that was expected from a theoretical trade
model.
|
Table1:
openness indicators.
(Rodriguez and Rodrik, 2000; Ogujiuba, Oji and
Adenuga, 2004).
Gross man
and Helpman (991) and Matsuyama
(1992) provide theoretical models where a technological backward country
specializes in a non-dynamic sector as result of openness, thus losing out from
the benefits of increasing returns. Underlying this result, there is an
imperfection in contracts or in financial markets that makes people obey a
myopic notion of comparative advantage.
Dollar and
Kraay (2004) and Loayza, Fajnzylber, and Calderon (2005) run growth regressions
on panel data of large samples of countries. Both papers use openness
indicators based on trade on trade volumes and control for their joint
endogeneity and correlation with country-specific factors through GMM methods
that involve taking differences of data and instruments. This implies that,
although they continue to use cross –country data, these papers favors
within-country changes as the main sources of relevant variation. Both papers
conclude that opening the economy to international trade brings about
significant growth improvements. Wacziarg and Welch (2003) arrive to a similar,
though more nuanced, conclusion from a methodological different stand point.
Using an event-study methodology –where the event is defined as the year of
substantial trade policy liberalization--, they find that liberalizing
countries tend to experience significantly higher volume of trade, investment
rates, and most importantly, growth rates. However, in an examination of 13
country-case studies Wacziarg and Welch find noticeable heterogeneity in the growth
response to trade liberalization. Although their small sample does not allow
for definite conclusions, it appears that the growth response after
liberalization is positively related to conditions of political stability.
Also,
various empirical literatures offer some examples of non-linear specifications
considering interaction effects. On the related topic of foreign direct
investment, Borensztein, De Gregorio and Lee (1998) find that the growth effect
of FDI is significantly positive only when the host country has, respectively,
sufficiently high human capital and financial depth. Specifically in the
analysis of grow effects of trade openness, an important antecedent of our work
is the empirical study by Bolaky and Freund (2004). Using cross-country regressions
in levels and changes of per capita GDP and controlling for simultaneity via
external instruments, they find that trade opening promotes economic growth
only in country’s that are not excessively regulated. They argue that in highly
regulated countries, growth does not accompany trade openness because resources
are prevented from flowing to the most productive sectors and firms, and trade
is likely to occur in goods where comparative advantage is actually missing.
Calderon,
Loayza, and Schmidt –Hebbel (2004) interact in their panel growth regressions a
measure of openness (volume of trade /GDP) with linear and quadratic terms of
GDP per capita, which they regard as proxy for overall development. They find
that the growth effect of trade opening is nearly zero for low levels of per
capita GDP, increases at a decreasing rate as income rises, and reaches a
maximum at high levels of income.
Chang,
Kaltani and Loayza (2005) study how the effect of trade openness on economic
growth depends on complementary reforms that help a country take advantage of
international competition. They presented some panel evidence on how the growth
effect of openness depends on a variety of structural characteristics. They use
non-linear growth regression specification that interacts a proxy of trade
openness with proxies of educational investment, financial depth, inflation,
stabilization, public infrastructure, governance, labour-market flexibility,
ease of firm entry, and ease of firm exit. They find that the growth effects of
openness are positive and economically significant if certain complementary
reforms are undertaken.
Giles and
Stroomer (2005) develop flexible techniques for measuring the speed of output
convergence between countries when such convergence may be of an unknown
non-linear form. They then calculate these convergence speeds for various
countries, in terms of half lives, using a time-series data-set for 88
countries. These calculations are based on both non parametric kernel
regression and ‘fuzzy’ regression and the results are compared with more
restrictive estimates based on the assumption of linear convergence. The
calculated half-lives are regressed, again in various flexible ways, on
cross-section data for the degree of openness to trade. They find evidence that
favors the hypothesis that increased trade openness is associated with a faster
rate of convergence in output between countries.
Joffrey
(2003) in his work, tries to clarify a number of issues related to the “trade
openness and growth debate”. He considers a number of sector specialization
indicators and examine whether they indeed affect the link between openness and
growth. Using both cross-section and panel data techniques, he finds that both
its pattern are likely to affect significantly the link between openness and
growth.
On research
studies that relate to Africa and Nigeria in
specific, Sarkar (2007) examines the relationship between openness (trade-GDP
ratio) and growth. The cross-country panel data analysis of a sample 51
countries of the South during 1981-2002 shows that for only 11 rich and highly
trade-dependent countries a higher real growth is associated with a higher
trade share. Time series study of individual country experiences shows that the
majority of the countries covered in the sample including the East Asian
countries experienced no positive long-term relationship between openness and
growth during 1961-2002. He finds that the experience of various regions and
groups shows that only the middle income group exhibited a positive long-term
relationship.
Also,
Baliamoune-Lutz and Ndikumana (2007) explore the argument that one of the
causes of the limited growth effects of trade openness in Africa
maybe the weakness of institutions. They also control for several major factors
and, in particular, for export diversification, using a newly developed data
set on Africa.
Results from Arellano-Bond GMM estimations on panel data from African
countries show that institutions play an important role in enhancing the growth
effects of trade. They find that the joint effect of institutions and trade has
U-shape, suggesting that as openness to trade reaches high levels, institution
play a critical role in harnessing the trade-led engine of growth. The results
from this paper are informative about the missing link between trade
liberalization and growth in the case of African countries. Likewise, Ogujiuba,
Oji and Adenuga (2004) test the validity of trade openness for Nigeria’s
long-run growth using a co-integration approach. They preferred the VAR
approach for some reasons and their econometric results show that there is no
significant relationship between openness and economic growth, and that
unbridled openness could have deleterious implications for growth of local
industries, the real sector and government revenue.
Moreover,
Addison and Wodon (2007) study the macroeconomic volatility, private investment
growth, and poverty in Nigeria.
Using cross-sectional data for 87 countries, they show that real per-capita
growth over the period 1980 -1994 was a function of productivity growth and
investment rates, both of which were negatively affected by volatility (in
terms of trade, real exchange rate, and public investments). When comparing Nigeria to high
growth nations, they find that most of the growth differential can be
attributed to Nigeria’s
higher macroeconomic volatility. Simulations suggest that if Nigeria had
lower levels of volatility and better macro- economic policies, poverty would
have been much lower than observed.
Nwafor
(unpublished) examines the effects reduction of import tariffs will have on
poverty in Nigeria, using information on Nigeria’s past experience with trade
liberalization he examined the possible impacts on the economy with a view to
making the reductions pro-poor.
Kandiero
and Chitiga (2003) investigate the impact of openness to trade on the FDI inflow
to Africa. Specifically, in addition to
economy wide trade openness, they analyze the impact on FDI of openness and
manufactured goods, primary commodities and services. The empirical work is
conducted using cross-country data comprising of African countries observed
over four periods: 1980-1985, 1985-1990, 1990-1995, and 1995-2001, they find
that FDI to GDP ratio responds well to increased openness in the whole economy
and in the services sector in particular.
Finally,
Njikam, Binam and Tachi (2006) assess the factors behind differences, in total factor
productivity (TFP) across sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) countries over the period
1965-2000. The cross-section, fixed effects using annual data, fixed-effects
using data in 3-year averages as well as the seemingly unrelated regression
(SUR) results show that (i) openness to world trade is conducive to TFP in SSA
region only if issues related to supply conditions such as poor transport and
communication infrastructure, erratic supply of electric energy. Corruption and
bad governance, insufficient education of the labour force etc are adequately
addressed, (ii) physical capital accumulation is important for TFP, (iii) the
size of the financial sector mattes for TFP, in some SSA countries and negative
for TFP in other SSA countries.
2.3 LIMITATION
OF PREVIOUS STUDIES
The literatures of previous studies
are plagued with a lot of problems. First of all, it is worthwhile to note that
the theoretical growth literature has given more attention to the relationship
between trade policies and growth rather than the relationship between trade
volumes and growth. Therefore the conclusion about the relationship between
trade barriers and growth cannot be directly applied to the effects of changes
in trade volumes on growth. There was also no consensus on the nature of the
relationship and nature of linear association (correlation) between openness
and growth. Likewise, there is no generally accepted measure of openness
indicators as it suit and please the researcher(s). Moreover, many of the
existing empirical literature are not country-specific, that is they deal with
cross-sectional analysis, thus they did not provide for differential in nature
and structure of various economies. Hence, developing countries like Nigeria are
recommended policies which are based on research conducted for industrially
advanced countries or even mixture of both.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
3.1 ANALYTICAL
FRAMEWORK
The primary aim of every economic
research is to arrive at a conjunction of economic theory, actual measurement
using the theory and techniques of statistical inferences as the matching
bridge (Haavelmo, 1994). The economic theory makes statement or postulates
hypothesis that are mostly quantitative (and some cases qualitative) in nature
and as such, it is the choice of the modeler or the researcher to validate
these hypothesis using appropriate models in line with current development and
betting method of estimation and inference.
Economic theory and some empirical
research argue that openness (trade or financial) will definitely increase
output growth while others opened that the relationship between the two is
ambiguous. In order to contribute empirically to this argument, this study will
employ econometric method as the research technique. The choice of method is
necessitated by the nature of the study which in this case is an analysis of
relationship among variables.
3.2 MODEL
SPECIFICATION
An economic model is a representation
of the basic features of an economic phenomenon; it is an abstraction of the
real world (Fonta, Ichoku and Anumudu, 2003). The specification of a model is
based on the available information relevant to the study in question. This is
to say, the formulation of an economic model is dependent on available
information on the study as embedded in standard economic theory and other
major empirical works, or else, the model would be theoretical. Two models are
postulated in this research work; the first is a non-monotonic model to capture
the first and second objective of the study, while the second is an analysis of
covariance (ANCOVA) model. The functional form of these models can be specified
as follows:
Model I:
RGDPt = (TPNt,TPNt2, RERt,
RIRt, UNEMPt, TREND)…..(i)
Mode II:
RGPt = f
(DUMt, TREND, (DUMt*, TREND))…….(ii)
The
mathematical form of the model can be expressed as:
Model I:
RGDPt: ao + a1TPNt
+ a2TPNt2
+ a3RERt
+ a4RIRt
+a5UNEMPt
+ a6TREND
Model II:
RGDPt = bo + biDUMt + b2TREND + b3(DUM*t
TREND)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------(iv)
But
equations (iii) and (iv) above are exact or deterministic in nature. In order
to allow for the inexact relationship among the variables as in the case of
most economic variables stochastic error term “μt” is added to both
equations. Thus, we can express the econometric form of the models as:
Model I:
RGDPt = ao + a1TPNt
+ a2TPn2t
+ a3RERt
+ a4RIRt
+ a5UNEMPt
+ a6TREND + μit
-------------------------------------(v)
Model II:
RGDPt = β0 + β1DUMt
+ β2TREND + β3(DUM*t TREND) +µ2t ------------------------------------------------------------------(vi)
Where RGDP = Real
Gross Domestic Product which is a proxy for the real output of the economy.
TPN = The Degree of openness measured as trade
– GDP
ratio i.e. (import + Export)/GDP
TPN2
= Real exchange rate
RIR = Real
Interest Rate
UNEMP = Unemployment Rate
DUM = O for pre-SAP period observations
I for post –SAP period observations
TREND = The chronological arrangement of time
µ = The
stochastic error term
In order to properly estimate the
parameters of the postulated models, we rescale the dependent variable by
logging it, thus, transforming them into a log-line models as follow:
Model I:
LOG (RGDPt)
= ao+ a1TPNt + a2TPN2t +a3RERt + a4RIRt
+ a5UNEMPt
+a6TREND + µit
-------------------- --------------(viii)
Model II:
LOG (RGDPt) = β0+β1DUMt+β2TREND
+β3 (DUM*tTREND) +µ2t -------------------------------------------------(viii)
Also, in order to avoid a spurious regression,
we subject each of the variables used to unit root (or stationary) test so as
to determine their orders of integration, since unit root problem is a common
feature of most time-series data.
3.2.1 TEST
OF STATIONARY
A stochastic process is said to
stationary if its mean and variance are constant overtime and the value are
auto-covariance between the two time period depends only on the distance or lay
between the two time periods and not the actual time at which the covariance is
computed (Gujarati, 2003). In other word, a stationary stochastic process is
one with constant mean, variance and covariance. Hence, stationarity test is carried out to verify whether a time
series is stationary or time-invariant so as to avoid a spurious regression.
The Phillips-perron (pp) unit roof
test will be employed. The choice of this test is to correct for some anomalies
associated with the conventional Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test. The
Phillips-perron test use non-parametric statistical methods to take care of the
serial correlation in the error terms without adding lagged difference terms.
This test is specified thus:
∆Yt =+a∆Yt-1+ μt
Where ∆ = difference operator
Yt = Time series
μt =Pure white noise.
Under the
null hypothesis that a = 1 for
stationarity, we use the PP test statistics to verify the presence of unit root
in the series.
3.2.2 TEST
OF COINTEGRATION
Economically, two (or more) variables
will be co integrated if they have a long term, or equilibrium, relationship
between (or among) them (Gujarati, 2003).
Individual time – series in a model
may be spurious but their linear combination may not. This is the purpose of
co-integration test.
The augmented Engle-Granger (AEG) test
will be employed to validate this hypothesis. This hypothesis is of two stages:
·
We will run the regression of equation (vii) and
generate the residual.
·
The residual generated to unit root test.
If the
generated residual is stationary at level form or integrated of order zero i.e.
1(0), then the variables of the model are co-integrated. The AEG test is
specified as:
∆mt = mt -1-+ai∑ ∆mt-1 +ℓt
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