After more than two decades of trade liberalization, faced with deep structural problems which were exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis and culminated in the 2011 Spring Revolution and government change, in 2016 Egypt started to protect some sectors from foreign competition. This paper assesses how tariff reforms during the 1998–2018 period affected the Egyptian labour market by focusing on real wages and job stability (i.e. having a permanent position). The empirical analysis is carried out on worker-level data from the available four waves of Egyptian Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), including the recently released 2018 wave. We find that higher tariff protection tends to worsen labour market conditions, both lowering real wages and decreasing the probability of finding a stable job. Furthermore, tariff changes show remarkable asymmetries. There is a negative and significant correlation between tariffs increases and real wages, while the positive impact of tariff reductions turns out to be negligible and insignificant. Our findings support the view that in Egypt protectionism hampered working conditions, contributing to inequality, while liberalizations did not improve nor deteriorate them.

中文翻译：

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20年关税改革对埃及工人的不对称影响


经过二十多年的贸易自由化，埃及面临着因2008年金融危机而加剧并在2011年春季革命和政府更迭中达到顶峰的深层结构性问题，2016年埃及开始保护某些行业免受外国竞争。本文通过关注实际工资和工作稳定性（即拥有永久职位）来评估 1998-2018 年期间的关税改革如何影响埃及劳动力市场。实证分析是根据埃及劳动力市场面板调查 (ELMPS) 的四轮工人数据进行的，其中包括最近发布的 2018 年。我们发现，更高的关税保护往往会恶化劳动力市场状况，既降低实际工资，又降低找到稳定工作的可能性。此外，关税变化显示出明显的不对称性。关税上涨与实际工资之间存在显着的负相关关系，而关税削减的积极影响却微不足道且微不足道。我们的研究结果支持这样的观点：在埃及，保护主义阻碍了工作条件，加剧了不平等，而自由化既没有改善也没有恶化工作条件。