Are exports a reliable source of economic growth in MENA countries? New evidence from the rolling Granger causality method

Salah Abosedra () and Chor Foon Tang
Additional contact information
Salah Abosedra: American University in the Emirates

Empirical Economics, 2019, vol. 56, issue 3, No 3, 841 pages

Abstract: Abstract Earlier investigations have concentrated on the effect of export expansion on economic growth while ignoring the importance of the stability of such relationship. This paper re-investigates empirically the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis for five countries in the MENA region: Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey, using the Granger causality technique. This study covers the sample period from 1980:Q1 to 2012:Q4. With the full sample, we find evidence supporting the ELG hypothesis only in Jordan, Morocco, and Turkey. Nonetheless, our time-varying Granger causality results have significantly validated the evidence of instability of the ELG hypothesis in these MENA countries. Therefore, changes in policies and regulations to improve the export sector of these countries will not ultimately pay off in terms of achieving high rates of stable economic growth in these countries. Policymakers in these countries should search for the alternative catalyst of growth to continuously as well as to effectively promote long-term economic growth in these countries.

Keywords: Granger causality; Export-led growth; MENA; Rolling regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 F43 O11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-017-1374-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:empeco:v:56:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s00181-017-1374-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... rics/journal/181/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00181-017-1374-7

Access Statistics for this article

Empirical Economics is currently edited by Robert M. Kunst, Arthur H.O. van Soest, Bertrand Candelon, Subal C. Kumbhakar and Joakim Westerlund

More articles in Empirical Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().