Information and communication technology (ICT), population growth, gross capital formation, Openness, labour and inflation are frequently well-thought-out as important drivers of economic growth for all countries, so as for Arab countries in our case. This study aims to examine the effect of these factors on 18 selected Arab countries economic growth, covering the period from 1995 to 2013, with the main interest of the impact of ICT. The results show positive and significant impact of ICT index (infodensity that represents the capital and labour stock of ICT) for each individual country (except for Djibouti with negative ICT index elasticity and UAE with insignificant impact) ranged from 0.10 for Lebanon to 0.469 point for Qatar. The panel regression results show that ICT positively and significantly affect the whole sample of 18 Arab countries economic growth with 0.108 point, as well as GCF ratio with 0.129 impact, in addition to openness which encounters positive and significant impact with 0.054 point, and inflation with negative significant impact. These results are accommodated with many related studies. Population growth is insignificant to economic growth. The 18 Arab countries are divided into three sub groups according to their infodensity levels. The research results show that there is a relatively large gap between first and second groups of high and intermediate infodensity values in one side and the third group (with low infodensity and GDP per capita values) on the other side.
In order to verify further the results of positive and significant impact of ICT on economic growth, a second study model that depends on Cobb-Douglas production function is applied with ICT and non-ICT capital services and labour services. This second model is applied on five Arab countries that covers the period from 1993 to 2014 using ARDL method. The regressed results show a long run equilibrium cointegrated relationship between ICT and non-ICT capital services, in addition to labour services and GDP growth. The results tell a positive and significant elasticity of ICT capital services at short and long run, and this value is more than the ICT capital services compensation share, which indicates ICT spillover in these Arab countries. Labour services impact on GDP growth is positive and significant on long run, but for non-ICT capital services, there is a negative and significant impact. So finally it is worth for the Arab countries to invest more and efficiently in ICT assets, in addition these countries have to efficiently use the available ICT resources.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:nusl.cz/oai:invenio.nusl.cz:259741 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Hodrab, Rami Mohammad Awad |
| Contributors | Maitah, Mansoor, Soukup, Alexandr |
| Publisher | Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze |
| Source Sets | Czech ETDs |
| Language | Czech |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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