African economic integration and trade

Stack, M.M. ORCID: 0000-0002-9213-7607, Amissah, E.B. ORCID: 0000-0002-2665-2264 and Bliss, M., 2023. African economic integration and trade. The World Economy. ISSN 0378-5920

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Abstract

Economic integration ranks as one of the leading development strategies in Africa. The newly created African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the proposed Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) linking three major regional blocks offer a new impetus to studying trade policy effects. Using a structural gravity model of bilateral manufacturing trade between the African Union member states and all countries in the world, the trade effects of African economic integration agreements (EIAs) are assessed. The findings suggest that economic integration, in aggregate, enhances total African exports. Disaggregating the effects by type of agreement and by subgroups of countries, free trade agreements (FTAs) and partial scope agreements (PSAs) are found to increase extra-African exports, but have no effects on intra-African exports. A positive and significant effect on intra-African exports is introduced when the FTA dummy is combined with AfCFTA in contrast to a neutral effect stemming from the joint FTA-TFTA dummy. The findings suggest that a continent-wide FTA yields greater benefits when compared with integrating the subregions.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	The World Economy
Creators:	Stack, M.M., Amissah, E.B. and Bliss, M.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	27 November 2023
ISSN:	0378-5920
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/twec.13538 DOI 1841334 Other
Rights:	This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: STACK, M.M., AMISSAH, E.B. and BLISS, M., 2023. African economic integration and trade. The World Economy, which has been published in final form at [https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.13538. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	04 Dec 2023 09:53
Last Modified:	04 Dec 2023 09:54
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/50482

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