South-South Trade: Geography Matters

Souleymane Coulibaly () and Lionel Fontagné

Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie from Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie

Abstract: Intra-subsaharan African trade appears to be very low, an outcome that is often attributed to the size of the exporting and the importing economies. If that were the explanation, there would be no untapped trade potential. We argue instead that the main determinants of this "missing trade" are geographical and infrastructure-related impediments. Being landlocked and poor translates into high trade costs. In this paper, we try to measure the impact of geographical impediments on South-South trade. We focus on the intra and extra-regional trade of the countries belonging to the West African Economic and Monetary Union. We use an Armington-based model in order to evaluate the impact of geographical and infrastructure-related impediments on bilateral trade flows within this region. We find two main results: paving all inter-state roads would increase trade by a factor of 3, and crossing a transit country reduces intra-bilateral trade flows by 6%, ceteris paribus.

Keywords: South-South trade; landlocked; transport infrastructure; border infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F11 F15 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2004-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published in Journal of African Economies, vol. 15 (2), June 2006, pp.313-341

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http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/textes/04.07.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: South--South Trade: Geography Matters (2006)
Working Paper: South-South Trade: Geography Matters (2006)
Working Paper: South-South Trade: Geography Matters (2006)
Working Paper: South – South Trade: Geography Matters (2004)
Working Paper: South-South Trade: Geography Matters (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lau:crdeep:04.07

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