Economic Growth, Productivity and Convergence of the Middle East and North African Countries

Mushtaq Ahmad Malik and Dr. Tariq Masood

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The present study tried to understand spatial and temporal variation in economic growth and productivity of the Middle East and North African Region for the period 1971-2014. Further, we also tested the hypothesis of regional convergence in the neo-classical framework. The study is based on the Penn World Table data of a sample of the Middle East and North African countries. Our findings suggest that oil-dependent economies have shown large variations in growth which can be linked with the fluctuations of oil price. Due to rapid population and labour force growth (both nationals and immigrants) in most of the oil-based economies, growth rates of per capita GDP and per worker GDP are quite meagre. Total factor productivity does not play a significant role and growth in the region is due to the capital accumulation. Both beta and sigma measures of convergence suggest that there is convergence in per worker GDP (labour productivity) and per capita GDP.

Keywords: economic growth; growth accounting; productivity convergence; MENA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-03-01, Revised 2018-07-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-gro
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