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Asymmetric Trade Flows, Monetary And Business Cycle Asynchronization Among Ecowas Member Countries: Feasibility Of Ecowas Monetary Union Formation Beyond 2020, Joseph Okwori, Walter O. Ugwuoke

Bullion

The formation of the West African Monetary Union which was initially slated for 2003 was postponed severally in 2005, 2009, 2015 and 2020. This raises the curiosity of investigating the possibility of its formation beyond 2020. It is against this backdrop that this paper investigated asymmetric trade flows, monetary policy and business cycle asynchronization among ECOWAS member countries: Feasibility of ECOWAS Monetary union formation beyond 2020. The objective was addressed using Pearson correlation analysis on computed zscores and the seemingly unrelated regression estimation (SURE). The finding shows that the flow of trade within ECOWAS member countries were highly asymmetric indicating …