This article examines the impact of institutional quality on bilateral trade flow between Malaysia and selected 25 African Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries. Four institutional qualities were selected from World Governance Indicators with other trade predictors from the period from 1985 to 2016. Using gravity model of trade and Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation method (PPML) technique, the results confirm that government effectiveness, regulatory quality and political stability have an adverse effect on bilateral trade flow among the OIC countries in Africa. On the other hand, these institutional quality variables were considered as a strength for Malaysian economic growth. Therefore, better institutional quality reforms are needed among OIC member countries in Africa in order to accelerate trade, economic growth and development in their region.

This paper investigates bilateral trade flows and the level of openness across ECOW-AS-15 nations for the period of 1981-2013 using Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML), fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). Comparing the results, the ECOWAS dummy variable was negative and significant in all of the estimation techniques. Financial openness under FMOLS and CCR was negatively significant. Trade openness was found to be negatively significant only under PPML. The empirical results indicate that a common border and distance have had a strong effect on ECOWAS trade; also there is a negative effect of trade flow among ECOWAS members. Moreover, the level of financial and trade openness among members impedes the level of trade flows on integration. The estimated results highlight the underlying significance of accurately accounting for endogeneity when estimating trade policy impacts.

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