Nigeria versus Ghana Compatibility: Whither A Joint Monetary Union in West Africa?
Opue, Job Agba; Kamgba, Joseph Odu

Abstract
In order to examine the effect of the level of symmetry in macroeconomic policies and trade flows on the level of synchronization of business cycles between Ghana and Nigeria as a pair of countries in West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), an Autoregressive Distributed Lag models was adopted for this study. The augmented dickey fuller unit root test indicated that the variables used were either integrated of order zero or order one. The cusum of squares test indicated the absence of structural breaks in the model. The empirical results provided clear support for Ghana and Nigeria to proceed in the creation of the second West African monetary union with their various currencies tied to the wamz-eco while also creating an enabling environment for other countries within WAMZ to join in due course. The cyclical thrift scheme for ECOWAS countries to boost industrialization, as well as trade protection was also recommended.

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