The global financial crisis so far has taught stakeholders some lessons. One lesson is that it has provided substantial evidence in favour of the view that ‘self-regulation' or the ‘invisible hand' cannot be relied upon to ensure financial stability. In view of this, the task of...

This paper identifies the determinants of synchronization of business cycles in ECOWAS because it allows decision-makers to better target their economic policies. It is relevant given the willingness of ECOWAS heads of state to create a single currency in 2020. Indeed, conducting actions in the...

Assessing the regional economic integration taking as a case study the Economic Community of West African (ECOWAS), we set off to empirically validate its essence in terms of benefits to its member countries in relation to the possible factors that might determine these benefits so as...

This paper investigates bilateral trade flows and the level of openness across ECOWAS-15 nations for the period of 1981-2013 using Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). Comparing the results, the...

This paper uses the gravity model to estimate the intensity of trade creation and trade diversion in COMESA, ECCAS and ECOWAS. Using annual data for the years 1991-8, we find that the intensity of trade creation or diversion varies from region to region and from period to period. The empirical...

Regional integration occupies a prominent place in the economic policies of most sub-Saharan African countries. However, despite different waves of initiatives across the African continent, the majority of African regional schemes have not managed to achieve their ambitious goal of promoting...

The idea of Regional integration can be traceable to the evolvement of the international trade relations in the post-war period, linked regionalism, while regionalism itself can be understood through two different historical perspectives. The first occurred in 1951 and1957 with European Coal and...