The determinants of participation in global value chains: The case of ECOWAS

Abstract

Regional integration is the strategy adopted at the continental level to strengthen Africa’s development. However, the different regional blocs already established on the continent face many challenges. Based on the economic integration of the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) region, this research analyzes the role of participation to Global Value Chain (GVC) in international trade as a crucial factor. Using a gravity model with Panel using fixed effects, the findings show that intra-regional trade is not significant in the explanation of the trade openness degree of countries but an increase in backward integration to GVC raises trade openness. The results also indicate how the competitiveness of trade structure and the structural factors related to countries affect the performance of GVCs. Intra-regional trade must further be inserted in the production of final goods which involves the maximum number of countries for the intermediate steps.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 45 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.