Revisiting the impact of trade integration on poverty reduction in ECOWAS: A panel quantile regression analysis

Akinyemi Christopher Afolabi and Dickson Thomas Ndamsa

The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, 2026, vol. 35, issue 2, 478-505

Abstract: This study builds on a previous study but goes further by using quantile regression to analyse the impact of trade integration on poverty in ECOWAS. Each country was grouped into quantiles based on their poverty headcount to achieve the objective of the study. The result showed that trade openness within ECOWAS significantly increases poverty while bilateral trade significantly reduces poverty headcount in the region except in the countries with high poverty where it was insignificant. FDI showed that it will be beneficial to reducing poverty in ECOWAS countries but not significant and this is due to insufficient inflow of FDI to most of the countries. Import duties and exchange rates were used to measure the impact of trading costs on poverty reduction, with each indicating a different impact on poverty reduction in ECOWAS across the different quantiles but were insignificant. The study result was different from the result of the previous study. The result of this study was able to give a justification that separating countries by their poverty level gives a clearer picture of how trade integration reduces poverty in each of the ECOWAS countries as compared to using one result to make generalizations even though the countries differ.

Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1080/09638199.2025.2459912

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