Assessing the impact of used vehicle imports ban policy: Evidence from Côte d’Ivoire

In 2017, Côte d'Ivoire imposed restrictions on the imports of used vehicles into its territory, one of which aims is environmental protection. This paper focuses on this policy and investigates its impacts on both (i) vehicle smuggling and (ii) environmental protection in the country. As finding a credible control for Côte d'Ivoire in the aim of the evaluation is thus challenging, the Augmented Synthetic Control Method is implemented to construct a valid counterfactual for the country's path without the law, with WAEMU member countries as control states. This method is used with an outcome model in a Panel Fixed Effects simulation and covariates configuration, to assess the Average Treatment effect on the Treated (ATT) on the outcome of interest after the passage of the 2017 law. The use of a panel structure allows for controlling time-invariant omitted variables correlated with the law adoption. The assessment shows that the policy has led to an increase of almost 39% in the per capita vehicle smuggling in the country. Furthermore, the policy has induced a reduction in the per capita CO2 emissions in the country with an average treatment effect indicating a decrease of -0.051 metric tons per inhabitant. These effects do not vanish over time and results remain robust to different robustness and falsification placebo tests.