Economic Integration of Africa in the 21st Century: Complex Network and Panel Regression Analysis

Tekilu Tadesse Choramo, Jemal Abafita, Yerali Gandica and Luis Rocha

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Global and regional integration has grown significantly in recent decades, boosting intra-African trade and positively impacting national economies through trade diversification and sustainable development. However, existing measures of economic integration often fail to capture the complex interactions among trading partners. This study addresses this gap by using complex network analysis and dynamic panel regression techniques to identify factors driving economic integration in Africa, based on data from 2002 to 2019. The results show that economic development, institutional quality, regional trade agreements, human capital, FDI, and infrastructure positively influence a country's position in the African trade network. Conversely, trade costs, the global financial crisis, and regional overlapping memberships negatively affect network based integration. Our findings suggest that enhancing a country's connectivity in the African trade network involves identifying key economic and institutional factors of trade partners and strategically focusing on continent-wide agreements rather than just regional ones to boost economic growth.

Date: 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-int and nep-net
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.21019 Latest version (application/pdf)

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:arx:papers:2410.21019

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().