Effets de l’Accord d’association avec l’Union européenne et du démantèlement de l’Accord Multifibres sur l’emploi en Tunisie : Une analyse en équilibre général intertemporel

This article aims at analysing the impact of the Euro-Tunisian Association Agreement and the Multifiber Agreement dismantling on employment in Tunisia. For this purpose we develop a multisectoral and intertemporal general equilibrium model taking account of the dynamic effects of these shocks. The specification of households and firms expectations permits to analyze the effects of the shocks on consumption and investment, and thus on employment. Furthermore, by including a multisectoral model of efficiency wages, the CGE model allows for an endogenous determination of wage differentials and unemployment. Moreover, one of the main innovations of the dynamic model developed is that it does not rely on the hypothesis of steady state growth at the reference scenario. Different scenarios of compensation of the Government tariff losses are implemented. The main conclusion is that the agreement with the EU helps Tunisia to minimise its job losses induced by the Multifiber Agreement dismantling. The positive impact of the free trade area is mainly due to the accumulation effects induced by the decrease of capital goods prices, capital goods being the bulk of Tunisia’s imports from the EU. The more the tax reform is investment friendly the higher accumulation effects are.