IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2021-019.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Regional Trade Integration a Growth and Convergence Engine in Africa?

Author

Listed:
  • International Monetary Fund

Abstract

The main objective of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) is to stimulate economic growth in participating countries through increased trade, economies of scale, knowledge and technology transfer. Using a panel data over the period 1979 to 2018, this paper examines the contribution of regional trade integration (RTI) to economic growth and income convergence in Africa and its major Regional Economic Communities (RECs). The results of the instrumental variable and panel fixed-effects estimation show that RTI promotes economic growth in Africa. However, it fosters income divergence, reflecting the distribution of the gains from regional integration in favor of the more developed economies of the continent. The results of this study show the importance to support the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) project with policies aimed at reducing non-tariff barriers to trade and improving infrastructure in order to maximize the effects on growth in all participating countries.

Suggested Citation

  • International Monetary Fund, 2021. "Is Regional Trade Integration a Growth and Convergence Engine in Africa?," IMF Working Papers 2021/019, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=50040
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tekilu Tadesse Choramo & Jemal Abafita & Yerali Gandica & Luis E C Rocha, 2024. "Economic Integration of Africa in the 21st Century: Complex Network and Panel Regression Analysis," Papers 2410.21019, arXiv.org.
    2. Federico D’Aloia & Philippe Gugler, 2024. "Impact of Covid-19 on the Economic Growth of ASEAN Countries: Convergence or Divergence?," International Journal of Global Business and Competitiveness, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 83-95, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.