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An analysis of the impact of merchandise trade on job creation in selected African countries Cover

An analysis of the impact of merchandise trade on job creation in selected African countries

Open Access
|Dec 2025

Figures & Tables

Figure 1:

Trend of merchandise trade (in billions of USD) from 2000 to 2024
Trend of merchandise trade (in billions of USD) from 2000 to 2024

Main findings of OLS and fixed effects

(1)(2)
OLSFixed Effe~s
Merchandise trade ~)0.0632 (0.0600)0.0746*** (0.0179)
Domestic credit to~o−0.248*** (0.0232)−0.0429** (0.0179)
Political Stabilit~−0.145** (0.0577)0.0725*** (0.0222)
lag_job_creation 0.305*** (0.0343)
Constant69.03*** (2.175)37.16*** (2.290)

Observations200199

Variable Description

No.VariableDescription
1Labor_forceNumber of employed persons (in millions) in each country per year
2Merch_tradeSum of merchandise exports and imports as % of GDP
3Credit_privateDomestic credit to private sector as % of GDP
4Pol_StabilityIndex measuring perceived likelihood of political instability and/or violence
5GDP_pc_currentReal GDP per capita (constant 2015 US$)
6InflationAnnual percentage change in consumer prices
7Job_creationProportion of working-age population engaged in the labor market
8FDIForeign direct investment, net inflows (BoP, current US$)

Descriptive statistics of the regression

VariableObsMeanStd. dev.MinMax
job_creation20058.3014114.1556836.79880.282
merch_trade20040.1274814.9561812.7124693.19966
credit_pri~e20038.1214436.136757.248348142.422
pol_Stabil~y20026.2694315.12362.41545952.83019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rsep-2025-0010 | Journal eISSN: 2547-9385 | Journal ISSN: 2149-9276
Language: English
Page range: 13 - 20
Submitted on: Oct 7, 2025
Accepted on: Nov 19, 2025
Published on: Dec 31, 2025
Published by: BC Group
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

© 2025 Ajibike Zuliat Jimoh, published by BC Group
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License.