North-South Trade: Is Africa Unusual?

David Coe () and Alexander Hoffmaister

No 1998/094, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: We estimate a gravity model to address the question of whether Africa’s bilateral trade with industrial countries is “unusual” compared with other developing country regions. Our main finding is that the unusually low level of African trade is explained by economic size, geographical distance, and population. This result holds after controlling for a country’s access to the sea, composition of exports, linguistic ties with industrial countries, and trade policies. If anything, the average African country tends to “overtrade” compared with developing countries in other regions, although the degree to which Africa overtrades has steadily declined over the past two-and-one-half decades.

Keywords: WP; country; developing country; developing country region; time trend; Africa; gravity model; trade; bilateral trade; country region; countries rise; industrial country; trade level; time effect; trade openness; bilaterial trade; Plurilateral trade; Gravity models; Trade policy; Trade balance; Exports; Asia and Pacific; North America; North Africa; Middle East (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 1998-06-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=2657 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: North-South Trade: Is Africa Unusual? (1999)
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:imf:imfwpa:1998/094

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().