TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE, INSTITUTIONS and INTER-REGIONAL TRADE IN SSA: THE CASE OF INTER-EAC TRADE

The study investigates how transport infrastructure and quality of institutions impacts inter-regional trade. The focus is on inter-regional trade in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), specifically, trade between East African Community (EAC) and three other regional economic communities in SSA, namely, SADC, ECOWAS and ECCAS. The data was mainly collected from WDI of the World Bank (data for macro variables), exports data from DOTS of IMF, transport infrastructure data from AfDB, distance and other dummy variables were collected from CEPII database. Description and labeling of the variables used in the regression has been done in in sheet 4 of the excel file attached. The data is in 3 excel sheets, for EAC-SADC, EAC-ECOWAS and EAC-ECCAS respectively. The results indicate positive impact of transport infrastructure and quality of institutions to inter-EAC exports.