Regional integration and the challenge of overlapping memberships on trade

Political and Institutional Prerequisites for Monetary Union: Assessing Progress in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

“…An examination of the broad integration literature suggests that answers to the first question lie in the contested terrain of political economy of regionalism and monetary union—where policy makers and the general public perceive their interests in supporting or opposing monetary union as a policy objective; how monetary union as a policy process must compete with other programs for public attention and resources; the tendency of countries to participate in regional integration as a function of asymmetric distribution of power between countries and when they are jointly satisfied that a power transition has occurred; the complementary impact on trade of multimembership in regional trade agreements; and what monetary union entails as a public symbol (see Chacha ; Effird and Genna ; Frieden and Jones ; Soderbaum ). Taken together, these studies treat the institutions of regional organizations like the Eurozone as a dependent variable by studying their origins (Dyson ).…”

Measuring Multi‐Membership in Economic Integration and Its Trade Impact: A Comparative Study of ECOWAS and SADC

“…A country belonging to two or more regional economic communities not only faces multiple financial obligations, but must cope with different meetings, policy decisions, instruments, procedures, and schedules. Customs officials have to deal with different tariff reduction rates, rules of origin, trade documentation, and statistical nomenclatures.Although all these studies claim that multi‐membership may limit the potential of these regional blocs to stimulate intra‐regional trade, only Chacha () provides empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. Chacha indicates that a one unit of overlap frequency ratio is associated with a reduction in intra‐RTA trade by 0.73% points.…”

“…Although all these studies claim that multi-membership may limit the potential of these regional blocs to stimulate intra-regional trade, only Chacha (2013) provides empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. Chacha indicates that a one unit of overlap frequency ratio is associated with a reduction in intra-RTA trade by 0.73% points.…”

“…First, the potential contribution of regional trade agreements (RTAs) in Africa has been contested both on theoretical and empirical grounds. In a nutshell, the arguments are that ( i ) similarities of comparative advantages and structural supply‐side characteristics imply that African RTAs will have a smaller contribution to bilateral trade flows compared with North‐South RTAs; and ( ii ) that the “spaghetti bowl” of African regional economic integration (REI) schemes mainly creates red tape and inconsistencies that actually hamper intra‐regional trade (ECA, :41; Chacha, :10). An extensive econometric investigation using a meta‐analysis refutes the former argument ( i ) and shows that some of the RTAs have made some positive gains while others have realised a disappointing performance (Afesorgbor, ).…”

“…Empirically, it is the first paper, to the best of our knowledge, that measures and compares the trade impact of overlapping (multi)‐membership in economic integration using the international trade empirical workhorse, the gravity model. Additionally, in an approach very different from Chacha (), we define multi‐membership as a count of RTAs that a country‐pair are both members of, in contrast to Chacha that measures multi‐membership at the RTA level. Theoretically, we also question the assertion of only looking at multi‐membership of RTAs as complication and duplication by also considering the possibility that some of the RTAs can be complementary.…”