A matching approach to study the impact of agoa on Sub-Saharan African countries

The impact of the USA's agoa preferences on SSA countries is studied using a matching approach. The results indicate that agoa beneficiaries have exported less to the USA compared to their matched controls. However, this has not been the case for their exports to the EU which has seen a higher share of exports relative to the control group. In addition, the results show that, in the short--run the SSA countries reduce exports to the EU in order to take advantage of agoa. Thus, due to capacity constraints these countries switched exports from the EU to the USA market. China, OECD, European and other developed countries are excluded from the control group used in the analysis. We therefore do not expect the strengths of these economies to be driving any of our results