Trade Liberalization in Egypt Webpage
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Building Bridges: An Egypt-U.S. Free Trade Agreement,  Ahmed Galal and Robert Z. Lawrence, Editors,  Brookings Institution, 1998 Contents: Chapter 1: Overview Ahmed Galal and Robert Z. Lawrence                   Chapter 2: Toward an Egypt-U.S. Free Trade Agreement: An Egyptian Perspective Ahmed Galal and Sahar Tohamy                   Chapter 3: Toward an Egypt-U.S. Free Trade Agreement: A U.S. Perspective Robert Z. Lawrence                   Chapter 4: Economic Incentives and Effects Bernard Hoekman, Denise Konan, and Keith Maskus

Regional Partners, Global Markets: Limits and Possibilities of the Euro-Mediterranean Agreements, Ahmad Galal and Bernard Hoekman, eds., London, Center for Economic Policy Research in Europe (CEPR) and Brookings Institution, 1997.

"Trade Liberalization in Egypt," Keith E. Maskus and Denise Eby Konan, Review of Development Economics, 1(3), 1997.  A computable general equilibrium model of Egypt is developed to analyze proposed reforms in its trade policies, including a partnership agreement with the European Union. The model has multiple trading regions and allows for administrative trade barriers and tariffs. The paper reports computations of the revenue impacts of trade liberalization and the required changes in distortionary commodity taxes to maintain a fixed real government budget. Egypt’s greatest potential gains come from removing its administrative trade barriers while   adopting globally free trade. The partnership agreement with the EU could lower or raise Egypt’s welfare, depending on prior trade reform.

“Joint Trade Liberalization and Tax Reform in a Small Open Economy: The Case of Egypt,” Denise Eby Konan and  Keith E. Maskus, Working Paper. We develop a CGE model of the Egyptian economy to analyze the impact of various trade liberalization scenarios, allowing distortionary domestic taxes to vary endogenously in order to satisfy a fixed real government revenue target.  We decompose computed welfare gains into effects from tax reform, trade reform, and their interaction.  Scenarios include removal or unification of the consumption tax, capital tax, or both, and tariff unification, a free-trade agreement with the European Union, and unilateral tariff elimination.  Welfare effects depend critically on the type of revenue replacement tax.  While both are important, neither trade-policy reform nor tax reform dominates. GAMS Code (excluding Egypt IO data)

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