Regional economic integration and the backward integration of ECOWAS sub-region into global value chains

Barnabas Olusegun Obasaju, Wumi Kolawole Olayiwola, Henry Okodua and Babatunde Sunday Adekunle

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 3, 243-263

Abstract: This paper examines the impact the economic community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a regional economic community (REC) has exerted on the backward integration of her member states into global value chains between 2007 and 2012. The conventional indicator of regional economic integration is compared vis-á-vis a relatively newly proposed indicator in order to investigate which one performs better in respect of economic expectations. Using the systems generalised method of moments, this study finds that the newly proposed indicator, which uses the rest of the world as the benchmark rather than the world while measuring the indicator of regional economic integration, outperforms its counterpart. Estimates also show that although ECOWAS as a REC has contributed positively to her members' backward integration into GVCs, this contribution is not statistically significant. To enhance members' access to the needed quality inputs via the backward integration, more intensified efforts are needed from this REC.

Keywords: regional economic integration; global value chains; GVCs; backward integration; systems GMM. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=102774 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijepee:v:12:y:2019:i:3:p:243-263

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().