The effects of corruption on growth performance of the mena countries

This article aims at testing the effects of institutional characteristics on growth in countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. For this purpose we consider conditional convergence in terms of initial conditions, macroeconomic performance, trade openness, government size, natural resource abundance and institutional and political structures for a sample of 90 countries over the period 1960–2000. We use regional indicators and MENA-specific variables in order to test for the effects of each variable on the growth performance of the MENA economies. We highlight the direct and indirect impacts of both corruption and bureaucratic quality on the MENA growth compared to the other regions of the world.