The impact of institutions and infrastructure on intra-regional trade: The Economic Community of West African States

Abban Stanley

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Accra, Ghana..

Author’s Contact Detail: E-mail Address ✉: stanicorn@yahoo.com

Accepted March 05, 2021

Institutions and infrastructure are key to stimulate trade flows and economic growth. This study seeks to investigate the role of institutions on trade in the Economic Community of West African States. Additionally, the study investigates the impact of trade and transport infrastructure. The study used a Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator for the augmented gravity model of international trade. The results show that Rule of Law and Political Stability facilitated intra-regional trade while Regulatory Quality, Corruption Control and Government Effectiveness hindered trade. Additionally, the study showed that trade and transport infrastructure has a negative but insignificant effect on trade. The study recommends a new institutional framework to aid curtail the ills and emphasize the need to intensify security as a paramount requirement to facilitate trade in the community.

Key words: West African, economic, trade, transport, Government.

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