IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/2299.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Asymmetric Regionalism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Where Do We Stand?

Author

Listed:
  • Cadot, Olivier
  • de Melo, Jaime
  • Olarreaga, Marcelo

Abstract

The paper reviews the likely economic effects of the Regional Economic Partnership Agreements (REPAs) proposed by the EU to the ACP countries to succeed to the Lomé IV agreements. We argue that, in spite of some likely positive effects because of reciprocity and because of the North-South partnership, the pronounced asymmetries among the Southern partners will lead to strong redistributive and marginalization effects that will require compensations that are likely to be costly to implement. It is also pointed out that efforts at regional cooperation agreements would avoid some of the shortcomings associated with the proposed discriminatory trade preferences that would accompany the proposed REPAs. And if the REPAs are negotiated, they should be accompanied by compensatory transfers from the EU for tax revenues losses attributable to the agreements.

Suggested Citation

  • Cadot, Olivier & de Melo, Jaime & Olarreaga, Marcelo, 1999. "Asymmetric Regionalism in Sub-Saharan Africa: Where Do We Stand?," CEPR Discussion Papers 2299, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2299
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=2299
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cadot, Olivier & de Melo, Jaime & Olarraga, Marcelo, 1999. "Regional Integration and Lobbying for Tariffs against Nonmembers," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 40(3), pages 635-657, August.
    2. Brada, Josef C & Mendez, Jose A, 1988. "An Estimate of the Dynamic Effects of Economic Integration," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 70(1), pages 163-168, February.
    3. Arvind Panagariya & Jagdish Bhagwati, 1996. "The Economics of Preferential Trade Agreements," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 51856, September.
    4. Sapir, Andre, 1998. "The political economy of EC regionalism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 717-732, May.
    5. Olarreaga, Marcelo & Soloaga, Isidro, 1998. "Endogenous Tariff Formation: The Case of Mercosur," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 12(2), pages 297-320, May.
    6. Fernandez, Raquel & Portes, Jonathan, 1998. "Returns to Regionalism: An Analysis of Nontraditional Gains from Regional Trade Agreements," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 12(2), pages 197-220, May.
    7. Cadot, Olivier & de Melo, Jaime, 1994. "The Europe Agreements and EC-LDC Relations," CEPR Discussion Papers 1001, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Grilli,Enzo R., 1993. "The European Community and the Developing Countries," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521385114.
    9. L. Alan Winters, 1997. "What Can European Experience Teach Developing Countries About Integration?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(7), pages 889-912, November.
    10. Rodrik, Dani, 1998. "Why Is Trade Reform So Difficult in Africa?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 7(0), pages 43-69, June.
    11. Wang, Zhen Kun & Winters, L Alan, 1998. "Africa's Role in Multilateral Trade Negotiations: Past and Future," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 7(0), pages 1-33, June.
    12. Michaely, Michael, 1996. "Trade preferential agreements in Latin America : an ex-ante assessment," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1583, The World Bank.
    13. Paul Collier & Jan Willem Gunning, 1995. "Trade Policy and Regional Integration: Implications for the Relations between Europe and Africa," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 387-410, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ademola Oyejide, 2002. "Working Paper 62 - Policies for Regional Integration in Africa," Working Paper Series 196, African Development Bank.
    2. S. Standaert & G. Rayp, 2012. "Regional Integration Agreements and Rent-Seeking in Africa," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 12/773, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    3. Kohnert, Dirk, 2005. "African Monetary Unions - Dominated by the North? On the Relevance of Rational Economic Reasoning Under African Conditions," MPRA Paper 82083, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Zafar, Ali, 2005. "Revenue and the fiscal impact of liberalization : the case of Niger," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3500, The World Bank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schiff, Maurice, 2001. "Will the Real “Natural Trading Partner” Please Stand Up?," Journal of Economic Integration, Center for Economic Integration, Sejong University, vol. 16, pages 245-261.
    2. Saggi, Kamal & Wong, Woan Foong & Yildiz, Halis Murat, 2017. "Preferential Trade Agreements and Rules of the Multilateral Trading System," MPRA Paper 76330, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Rupa Duttagupta & Arvind Panagariya, 2007. "Free Trade Areas And Rules Of Origin: Economics And Politics," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(2), pages 169-190, July.
    4. Kamal Saggi & Woan Foong Wong & Halis Murat Yildiz, 2022. "The role of non‐discrimination in a world of discriminatory preferential trade agreements," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 174-212, February.
    5. Grether, Jean-Marie & Olarreaga, Marcelo, 1998. "Preferential and non-preferential trade flows in world trade," WTO Staff Working Papers ERAD-98-10, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    6. Cadot, Olivier & de Melo, Jaime & Olarreaga, Marcelo, 2001. "Can bilateralism ease the pains of multilateral trade liberalization?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 27-44, January.
    7. Hinnerk Gnutzmann & Arevik Gnutzmann‐Mkrtchyan, 2019. "The silent success of customs unions," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 178-224, February.
    8. Winters, L. Alan, 1996. "Regionalism versus Multilateralism," CEPR Discussion Papers 1525, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Pokrivcak, Jan, 2007. "Economics and Political Economy of Regional Trade Agreements," Working Papers 7286, TRADEAG - Agricultural Trade Agreements.
    10. Hinnerk Gnutzmann & Arevik Gnutzmann-Mkrtchyan, 2019. "The silent success of customs unions," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(1), pages 178-224, February.
    11. Antoni Estevadeordal & Caroline Freund & Emanuel Ornelas, 2008. "Does Regionalism Affect Trade Liberalization Toward Nonmembers?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1531-1575.
    12. Arvind Panagariya & Rupa Dutta Gupta, 2003. "Did the Multi-fiber Agreement Make the NAFTA Politically More Acceptable? A Theoretical Analysis," International Trade 0308010, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Takfarinas Saber & Dominik Naeher & Philippe Lombaerde, 2023. "On the Optimal Size and Composition of Customs Unions: An Evolutionary Approach," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(4), pages 1457-1479, December.
    14. Emanuel Ornelas, 2000. "Free Trade Areas with Politically Active Oligopolies," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1457, Econometric Society.
    15. Jaime DE MELO & Marcelo OLARREAGA, 2017. "Trade Related Institutions and Development," Working Papers P199, FERDI.
    16. Busse, Matthias & Huth, Matthias & Koopmann, Georg, 2000. "Preferential Trade Agreements: The Case of EU-Mexico," Discussion Paper Series 26269, Hamburg Institute of International Economics.
    17. Estevadeordal, Antoni & Shearer, Matthew & Suominen, Kati, 2009. "Market Access Provisions in Regional Trade Agreement," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 2524, Inter-American Development Bank.
    18. Richard Baldwin, 2008. "Big-Think Regionalism: A Critical Survey," NBER Working Papers 14056, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Saggi, Kamal & Wong, Woan Foong & Yildiz, Halis Murat, 2019. "Should the WTO require free trade agreements to eliminate internal tariffs?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 316-330.
    20. Arvind Panagariya, 2000. "Preferential Trade Liberalization: The Traditional Theory and New Developments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 287-331, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    asymmetry; Comparative Advantage; Compensation; Regionalism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:2299. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.