Effects Of Trade Policies on External Trade Performances of Ecowas Countries (1996- 2017)
Date
2026
Authors
Essotanam Mamba
Afi Balaki
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AERC
Abstract
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional economic community supported by the African Union, has adopted a common trade policy through the implementation of the Trade Liberalization Scheme (TLS) instituted in 1979. One of the essential steps of this TLS is the entry into force of the ECOWAS common external tariff on January 1, 2015, a necessary step for the integration of the countries of this Community into the African Continental Free Trade Area. The objective of the paper is to analyze the effects of trade policies on foreign trade performance of ECOWAS countries between 1996-2017. Unlike most studies on the subject, the paper uses a new continuous trade policy index captured by the implementation of the TLS to analyze the direct and indirect effects of trade policies on manufacturing exports and imports. Controlling for the endogeneity of the variables of interest, the findings indicate that the TLS implementation significantly contributes to the growth of imports but much more exports. These findings are robust to different estimation techniques. Furthermore, the analysis of the multiplicative interaction model reveals that the effects of TLS on manufacturing trade performance increase with financial development and the rate of cellular mobile subscriptions. These findings have implications for economic policies.