Publications

This paper aims at analysing the effects of FDI that mostly originate from the EU country partners, on economic growth in Morocco. Using yearly time series data from 1973 to 2014, the Vector Autoregressive Regression (VAR) modelling has been used to study the different relations that link FDI, GDP and international trade (imports and exports). Furthermore, Granger causality model has also been implemented to capture causality relationships between the macroeconomic variables. Given that agriculture is a key sector within the structure of the Moroccan economy, both models are performed likewise. Results show that there is a unidirectional relationship between FDI and economic growth in Morocco; meaning that GDP causes FDI, while FDI does not cause GDP growth. Similarly, the agricultural GDP seems to be significantly co-integrated only with its own lagged values, stressing that no role of agricultural FDI is econometrically noted. Surely, these results have to be linked to the relative weakness of inflowing FDI during the considered period, as it theoretically would be expected. However, policy makers would have to review the whole policy that aims at encouraging FDI as an economic growth promoter in Morocco, including the diversification of FDI origin.

This paper focuses on estimating wage differentials between males and females in Egypt to understand the determinants of the gender wage gap. The methodology depends on Oaxaca-Blinder and Neuman-Oaxaca decomposition techniques, using the data of the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey 2006 and 2012 (ELMPS 2006, 2012). The findings of this paper determine the differences in wages due to real variations in characteristics between both genders, for example, education, experience, living in urban or rural areas, the marital status and the sector of employment and other differences, due to discrimination against women in addition to unobservable differences. It is estimated that the wage gap between males and females was 25% and 21% in 2006 and 2012, respectively, and that is a sign of improvement. Part of this gap can be explained by the fact that females are less likely to have high-level and high-paying jobs than males. Moreover, unobservables like non-cognitive skills or psychological characteristics are considered innovative explanations for the gender wage gap.

The paper examines the impact of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBTs) on firm exports in Egypt, over the period (2005-2011). It uses firm-level data for Egypt and combines it with the TBT specific trade concerns database of the WTO. Employing a variant of a gravity model with high-dimensional fixed effects, it estimates the impact of TBTs on firm intensive and extensive margins, exit and entry probabilities, as well as on product and market diversification. Regressions examine the heterogeneous effect of TBTs by firm size. Results indicate an insignificant effect of TBTs on firm intensive margin.  On the other hand, the extensive margin and entry probability are negatively affected by TBTs, while exit probability is positively affected. Accordingly, TBTs mainly represent an increase in fixed costs of exporting. Importantly, smaller firms are more adversely affected by TBTs in their export participation and entry and exit decisions. The effect of TBTs on firm product diversification is found to be sector-dependent; positive for agricultural sectors and mixed for non-agricultural ones. Finally, firms generally tend to increase their market diversification in response to TBTs. This is especially true for large firms within their set of African and Asian destination markets. By contrast, there are less prospects of firm diversification into less stringent destinations within the European region.