Regional Integration Beyond The Traditional Trade Benefits

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) seeks at changing the weak intra-regional trade and the strong disparities between countries. How to achieve such an objective, given the heterogeneous profiles of the member countries such as Côte d'Ivoire (Regional pole) and Burkina Faso (one of the poorest)? This is an important issue at stake. Intra-African migration flows is one of the best arguments for regional integration in the face of negligible goods and investment flows. The presence of migrants makes Burkina Faso a «share-holder» in Côte d'Ivoire's economic success. Based on the economic theories of migration, the publication presents a very comprehensive and detailed empirical analysis of changes in factors mobility inside WAEMU, with particular emphasis on the two representative countries. Migrations concern rural populations and to deal with the microeconomic issues, the study used survey data collected in the Burkinabè Sahel. Secondary data on skills migration and brain drain are constructed to study the macroeconomic convergence.

This text examines regionalism from the perspective of developing countries. It presents a comprehensive account of existing theory and empirical results and incorporates the findings of formal analyses ofthe politics and dynamics of regionalism.

In the late 1980s regional integration emerged as one of the most important developments in world politics. It is not a new phenomenon, however, and this 1999 book presents an analysis of integration across time, and across regions. Walter Mattli examines projects in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, but also in Latin America, North America and Asia since the 1950s. Using the tools of political economy, he considers why some integration schemes have succeeded while many others have failed; what forces drive the process of integration; and under what circumstances outside countries seek to join. Unlike traditional political science approaches, the book stresses the importance of market forces in determining the outcome of integration; but unlike purely economic analyses, it also highlights the impact of institutional factors. The book will provide students of political science, economics, and European studies with a framework for the study of international cooperation.

The West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) seeks at changing the weak intra-regional trade and the strong disparities between countries. How to achieve such an objective, given the heterogeneous profiles of the member countries such as Cote d'Ivoire (Regional pole) and Burkina Faso (one of the poorest)? This is an important issue at stake. Intra-African migration flows is one of the best arguments for regional integration in the face of negligible goods and investment flows. The presence of migrants makes Burkina Faso a share-holder in Cote d'Ivoire's economic success. Based on the economic theories of migration, the publication presents a very comprehensive and detailed empirical analysis of changes in factors mobility inside WAEMU, with particular emphasis on the two representative countries. Migrations concern rural populations and to deal with the microeconomic issues, the study used survey data collected in the Burkinabe Sahel. Secondary data on skills migration and brain drain are constructed to study the macroeconomic convergence.

Diploma Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: 2,3, University of Hohenheim, language: English, abstract: In this study it is intended to investigate today ́s actual economic interdependence of what we would call the Middle East and North African (MENA) region and to analyze its economic interweaving, both among its member countries and into the global trading system. Being aware of the complexity and breadth of this topic, the author has chosen only three subset economic integration agreements, both between the countries of the MENA region (intraregional) - also comprising a subregional agreement - and between the MENA region and other regions (interregional), for closer analysis. Concerning the efforts made towards interregional economic integration, this thesis concentrates mainly on the so-called EU-MED Partnership which was initiated at the Barcelona Conference in 1995 and aims to establish an EU-Med Free Trade Area (EMFTA) by the year 2010 including the EU and the 12 so-called Mediterranean countries which, apart from Malta, Cyprus and Turkey, all belong to the MENA region. In contrast, on the intraregional level, the latest initiative in 1997 will be examined, where 17 out of 22 Arab League member states - all of which also belong to the MENA region apart from Sudan - joined to constitute a "Greater Arab Free Trade Area" (GAFTA, mainly to get rid of traditional trade barriers for goods. On the smaller subregional level, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), consisting of 6 Gulf countries, which plans the establishment of a common currency by 2010, will be examined more closely. With GAFTA, GCC and the EU-MED Partnership all being in a different depth of integration and each representing one of the three different levels of integration (subregional, intraregional, interregional), the author holds the view that this choice reflects the actual state of integration in the region best. In a nutshell, this study tests the

This book examines how the existence of overlapping regional institutions has presented a daunting challenge to the workings of various Regional Economic Communities (RECs) on the African continent. The majority of the African countries are members of overlapping and, sometimes, contradictory RECs. For instance, in East Africa, while Kenya and Uganda are both members of EAC and COMESA, Tanzania, which is also a member of the EAC, left COMESA in 2001 to join SADC. In West Africa, while all former French colonies belong to ECOWAS, they simultaneously keep membership of UEMOA, an organization which is not recognized by the African Union (AU). Such multiple and confusing memberships create unnecessary duplication and dims the light on what ought to be priority. Various chapters in this book have therefore sought to identify and proffer solutions to related challenges confronting the workings of the RECs in different sub-regions of the African continent. The discourses range from security to the stock exchange, identity integration, development framework, labour movement and cross-border relations. The pattern adopted in the book involves devolution of related discussions from the general to the specific; that is, from the continental level to sub-regional case studies.