Constraints to Economic Development and Growth in the Middle East and North Africa

Juliane Brach

No 85, GIGA Working Papers from GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies

Abstract: When comparing the speed and extent of economic development in different geographic regions of the world over the past 20 years, the under-average performance of Arab countries in general and Arab Mediterranean countries in particular is striking. This is despite an overall favorable geo-strategic situation at the crossroads of three continents, with excellent connections to sea and waterways and in direct proximity to the European Union, one of the world's economic hubs. It is also despite the minor importance of negative factors such as a high-burden diseases or high levels of ethnic fractionalization. In this paper, I focus on identifying the most important constraints on Arab Mediterranean economic development. I use state-of-the-art econometric tools to quantify constraints that have been identified through economic theory and studies of the political economy characteristics of the region. The empirical results offer support for the central hypothesis that limited technological capacities and political economy structures are the primary constraints on economic development. With a view to international structural adjustment efforts, my findings imply that the limited success of the Euro-Mediterranean policy to stimulate the economic development of the Arab Mediterranean countries might be because structural adjustment efforts do not tackle - or at least do not sufficiently tackle - these constraints.

Keywords: economic development; quantitative analysis; political economy; Arab countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 F50 O10 O53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47751/1/59228719X.pdf (application/pdf)

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:zbw:gigawp:85

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GIGA Working Papers from GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().