This research project was begun on the initiative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. 
 

The Global Priorities Institute at Oxford University, inspired by the effective altruism movement, has created a research agenda to prioritize the research that has the potential to do the most good over the long term (https://globalprioritiesinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/gpi-researchag…). Similarly, our project seeks to identify Legal Research Priorities in concrete fields of law and regarding concrete issues in each field, based on objective criteria.

The main purpose of this study is to study the impact of Regional Integration on the attractiveness of Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Saharan African countries. This investigation was carried out using a panel data analysis, over a sample of 30 countries for a time-period of 23 years, from 1996 to 2018. To account for the modelling of dynamics and to establish the short-run and long-run relationships between Foreign Direct Investment, the Unrestricted Vector Autoregressive model was employed.

The “Chinafrica” relationship has recently been the focus of several international political discourses, whereby the motives behind recent breathtakingly fast upsurge of Chinese FDI in the African continent is being questioned. Hence, the purpose of this study is to analyse why China has been exponentially investing into Africa and it examines the determinants of Chinese FDI in Africa. The conceptual model is based upon the UNCTAD framework of FDI and the investigation is carried out using a balanced panel data from a sample of 25 African countries over the period 2005-2015.

The study employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to examine the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) in the mining sector on the Zimbabwe economy, while controlling for both non-mining FDI and domestic investment. Using data over the period 1988–2018, this research results show that foreign direct investment in the mining sector has a signifcant positive relationship with the country’s GDP in the long run. Mining FDI is revealed to have relatively higher efects as compared to FDI in non-mining sector and domestic investment.

This paper employs an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to examine the long-run and short-run determinants of the real effective exchange rate in fifteen Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries using annual data spanning from 1980 to 2015. Not surprisingly, the findings show that the determinants vary from one country to another. Terms of trade, GDP per capita, net foreign assets and trade openness are found to be key factors that cause fluctuations in the real effective exchange rate of most of these countries in the long-run.

Trade agreements have received heightened attention in recent years. Both, initiatives to further liberalize markets as well as protectionist calls have been shaping the current development of trade policy. We have also seen a further shift away from multilateral to regional and bilateral trading arrangements with competing objectives pursued by the US, China and the European Union. What has received less attention is how the current revival of geopolitics and protectionism has been shaping the trade architecture in regions such as Latin America.

The emergence of China in the international trading system has shifted its gravity center, as the country has become one of the mayor actors in international economic relations. Through the subscription of preferential agreements, China is building a network of strategic partnerships worldwide, including Latin America. The purpose of this paper is to answer the questions: Do free trade agreements (FTAs) between China and Latin American countries contribute to expand trade flows and enhance products diversification?
 

While recent technological advances have supported an increase in digital trade, this growth has occurred with a lack of clear and defined rules. This deficiency has become an issue for Latin American countries. With the multilateral trade regime impasse, more complex regional and bilateral agreements have emerged. The formulation of digital trade regulation raises many questions. In this chapter we deal with the new rules on digital trade in regional trade agreements (RTAs) recently negotiated by Latin American economies.