Growth Spillovers for the MENA Region: Geography, Institutions, or Trade?

Merve Aksoylar Baysoy and Sumru Altug

The Developing Economies, 2021, vol. 59, issue 3, 275-305

Abstract: We examine the role of spatial spillovers in economic growth for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We explicitly model spatial interactions that may arise from geography, bilateral trade, or institutional similarities, and ask how much they are likely to matter for growth externalities and spillover effects. We find that the economic growth of a MENA country is positively affected by the economic growth of countries that are geographically close and that have similar institutional characteristics. The spillover effects of growth are due to economic activities in countries that trade primarily in oil, which accounts for the gap in spillover effects due to institutional similarity between resource‐rich and resource‐poor countries in the MENA region. However, trade linkages matter less. Where they do have an effect, it is through the local range effects of a spatially lagged explanatory variable capturing the effects of the trade balance on growth.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/deve.12267

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:deveco:v:59:y:2021:i:3:p:275-305

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0012-1533

Access Statistics for this article

The Developing Economies is currently edited by Katsuji Nakagane

More articles in The Developing Economies from Institute of Developing Economies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().