L’année 2012 a vu se fêter les anniversaires des « quarante ans de la Zone franc », des cinquante ans de la Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) et des quarante ans de la Banque des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale (BEAC), venant eux-mêmes après dix ans de la Banque...

La Banque Centrale de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) a une longue expérience de politique monétaire menée dans le cadre d’une union monétaire, puisqu‘elle s’étend sur cinquante ans. Cette expérience est riche d’enseignements comme en témoigne le bilan de son action.

Recent years have seen a surge in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the development of non-tariff measures (NTMs). As a consequence, a growing number of RTAs include provisions on NTMs. This paper investigates the effect of standards-harmonization clauses contained in many North-South...

Recent years have seen a surge in regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the development of non-tariff measures (NTMs). As a consequence, a growing number of RTAs include provisions on NTMs. This paper investigates the effect of standards-harmonization clauses contained in many North-South...

Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa make a compelling case for these economies to...

Political motives, geography, and the uneven distribution of gains trumped the traditional efficiency gains across Africa’s Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The small, sparsely populated, fragmented, and often isolated economies across Africa make a compelling case for these economies to...

This paper revisits the celebrated conflict that lasted close to two decades and pitted the EU against the US and against MFN suppliers of bananas. It starts by recalling the major turning points in the dispute and argues that the EU-US conflict could largely be explained by the changing...

Rwanda has made much progress towards integrating into the world economy, with yearly export growth rates close to 20%. However, largely because of being landlocked, Rwanda is still isolated from many trading partners and, because of the low share of trade in GDP, exports do not contribute much...

The financial sector is becoming more important because of the natural resource booms. The taxation of natural resource exports will generate large increases in revenues and this will transform the ability of governments to borrow in the markets for sovereign debt. These constitute temporary...

This paper provides a new theoretically-derived measure of preference margins at the product level, that takes into account competition across exporters as well as competition with domestic producers on a given market. This indicator is derived for differentiated goods under imperfect...