Impact of Covid-19 on Tunisian Imports

Amal Medini (), Chaima Ben Abderrahmen () and Leila Baghdadi
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Amal Medini: University of Tunis
Chaima Ben Abderrahmen: University of Tunis

No 1531, Working Papers from Economic Research Forum

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted trade flows between countries, thereby revealing the vulnerability of global value chains. This unexpected event sparked a public debate on devising new policies to increase the resilience of value chains. This study identifies vulnerabilities related to supply chains with a specific focus on Tunisian imports during the period 2019-20. To this end, we select three potential drivers of import vulnerability based on post-pandemic reports and discussions and assess their impact on Tunisia’s overall imports using a quantitative analysis. For each product, we consider: (1) the market concentration of Tunisia’s suppliers, (2) the intensity of imports, and (3) COVID-19 products – that we call ‘essential products’ – as a potential source of import vulnerability, the impact of which we assess separately. These factors are country-specific product characteristics. Then, we identify a model based on a first differences estimator to assess the impact of the change in vulnerable imports on the change in total imports at the country-month and country-quarter levels using import data for the period 2019-20. Finally, we use input-output linkages to assess the level of exposure of Tunisia’s local industries to vulnerable supplies from partner countries through a downstream propagation approach. This framework will help us get insights into Tunisia’s most sensitive imports and industries.

Pages: 29
Date: 2022-01-20, Revised 2022-01-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-int
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Published by The Economic Research Forum (ERF)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Impact of COVID-19 on Tunisian imports (2022)
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