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 reviews the role of services in development and growth, the potential role of trade in services as a driver of the productivity performance of sectors that use services as inputs, and the links between services policies and domestic trade costs. Barriers to trade in services have...

In spite of widespread tariff reductions, intra-African borders remain thick. Regional trade is inhibited by inadequate transportation infrastructure, but also by various government-imposed measures. This paper combines price data from the World Bank’s International Comparison Project (ICP)...

This paper assesses the impact of migration on export performances. In particular, it highlights and helps understand how African migrants foster African trade. Relying on a new dataset on international bilateral migration recently released by the World Bank spanning from 1980 to 2010, we...

The EAC is on the verge of establishing a customs union. But this is accompanied by fears that the Customs Union would lead to trade imbalances among the Partner States, which would create serious problems for the proper functioning of the Customs Union itself. To mitigate these problems the...

The main focus of this paper is the question if the success of regional integration organisation in developing countries is, in fact, dependent on factors like similarity of their economic structure, market size or lack of committment. It is shown that there are also other more important...

The European Union is currently negotiating free trade agreements, called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), with African countries as part of the Cotonou Agreement between the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. The paper empirically assesses the impact of the EPAs...

Over the past decade, Africa has been experiencing an economic resurgence. Yet, the continent is facing several difficult challenges and many economies of the region continue to be among the least competitive in the world. Africa's competitiveness is adversely affected by: (i) poor regional...

This study intends to present a very detailed and dynamic analysis of the trade-related aspects of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) negotiations. We use a dynamic partial equilibrium model – focusing on the demand side – at the HS6 level (covering 5,113 HS6 products). Two alternative...

The sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are excluded from the mega-deals (EU-USA, EU-Japan, China-Japan-Korea…) under negotiations: they might however undergo important economic impacts, as their exports remain dependant from those large markets. Using a dynamic Computable General Equilibrium...