Trade liberalization and poverty reduction in the WAEMU area

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to examine the impact of trade openness on poverty based on data from a panel of eight countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union between 1993 and 2021. The adopted methodological approachis mainly based on the analysis of panel data. Our results indicate that trade openness contributes significantly to poverty reduction. However, it is important to note that the growth channel, often discussed in the theoretical literature, remains insignificant in the relationship between trade openness and poverty. This finding is partly explained by the fact that the benefits of openness are spread across the economy and cannot be attributed simply to improvements in growth.