Technology, Political Economy, and Economic Development in the Middle East and North Africa
-
Juliane Brach
Comparing the pace and extent of economic development across the developing regions yields that Arab countries have displaced a weak economic performance over the past 20 years, despite their favorable geo-strategic location and a high density of national and international structural adjustment efforts. Using cross-country regressions, this paper identifies two binding constraints to economic development in the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA): 1) Most countries are not able to apply or adopt existing technologies efficiently and 2) The economically inefficient allocation of resources is rooted deeply in regional political economy structures. These results challenge the scholarly debate, but can help to understand why international structural adjustment programs that focused on privatization and trade liberalization only showed limited success in the MENA region.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Technology, Political Economy, and Economic Development in the Middle East and North Africa
- Viability of Keeping a Fixed Exchange Rate in an Oil Exporting Country: Some Results for Libya from a Computable General Equilibrium Model
- The Effects of Regional Trade Arrangements on Agri-Food Trade: An Application of the Gravity Modeling Approach to the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries
- The Best Asset Pricing Model for Estimating Industry Costs of Equity in Tunisia
- Bank Ownership and Corporate Performance: Evidence from Egypt
Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Technology, Political Economy, and Economic Development in the Middle East and North Africa
- Viability of Keeping a Fixed Exchange Rate in an Oil Exporting Country: Some Results for Libya from a Computable General Equilibrium Model
- The Effects of Regional Trade Arrangements on Agri-Food Trade: An Application of the Gravity Modeling Approach to the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries
- The Best Asset Pricing Model for Estimating Industry Costs of Equity in Tunisia
- Bank Ownership and Corporate Performance: Evidence from Egypt
