WAMZ countries have accumulated high levels of public debt less than two decades after the massive debt forgiveness effected under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative. This has raised sustainability concerns as rising debt levels have the potential to create negative spillover...

Countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are heterogeneous, characterized by marked differences in production and export structures, divergent levels of inflation rates and fiscal positions. These features suggest that there is a greater tendency for the transmission...

Achieving fiscal convergence between countries of a monetary union helps in the design and implementation of policies to strengthen macroeconomic convergence, which mitigates the contagion effects of macroeconomic instability and ensures the long-term viability of the proposed union. This paper...

Studies have shown that trade relationships among countries in Africa including intra-regional groupings such as the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) is low. Therefore, intra-trade becomes critical in unlocking the growth potentials of the continent and its regional groupings. Taking cognizance...

This study provides country-specific empirical evidence on the optimal inflation-growth threshold in the WAMZ over the period 1996-2021. Although there is large empirical literature on this subject, however, previous studies on the WAMZ economies generally focused on exogenous approaches of...

While previous studies have explored the relationship between inflation and economic growth, the existing literature on threshold effect of inflation on economic growth in the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) predominantly assumes a linear association, neglecting the possibility of...

This study examines the effects of bilateral exchange rate on trade flows in the WAMZ and assesses the role of complementarity trade structures in enhancing intra-WAMZ trade. The modified gravity model is used to assess whether efforts by WAMZ countries to facilitate transactions in national...

This study assesses the speed of real convergence in ECOWAS using the Optimal Currency Area (OCA) theory to determine the readiness of member countries for a monetary union. The study leveraged on Bayoumi and Eichengreen (1996) and computed OCA indices utilizing both variables suggested by the...