The European Union & Suthern African Development Community Economic Partnershiop Agreements Impact on the Namibian Exports

Abstract: The amount of research that has been done on the effects of free trade is extensive to say the least. Even though free trade creates winners and losers, there has almost been a unanimity among economists that free trade leads to a large net gain for the society which is in the best interest of all countries in the world. This thesis investigates the effects of free trade agreements on exports by a case study on Namibia’s exports to the EU market. We use the duty-free and quota-free access that Namibia obtained to the EU market in 2008 to study if the absence of trade barriers leads to increased trade. This is done by examining the quantity exported from Namibia to the EU during 1999-2015 with an OLS fixed-effects model and a Difference in Differences approach. The results obtained from our two different models indicates that the duty- and quota-free access led to increased exports. However, our empirical methods did not produce enough significant estimates to make a reliable or convincing assessment of the duty-free and quota-free market access.