Could New Growth Cross-Country Empirics Explain the Single Country Growth of Syria during 1965-2004?

The goal of this paper is to examine, whether the results of new growth cross-country empirics (Barro-type model) match the results of growth accounting exercise in Syria, during the period 1965-2004. To deal with this matter three main steps are followed. The first is, using cross-country growth empirics to find out the determinants of economic growth in developing countries. Secondly, individual country growth accounting is used to examine the sources of growth in Syria. Finally a test measuring to what extent the results of cross-country model match those of the Syrian individual country analysis is undertaken. The main results of this paper are: - The main determinants of growth in developing countries are domestic investment, initial income, initial human capital, quality of institutions, government consumption, inflation, openness and political instability, respectively. - The main engines of growth in Syria are physical and human capital accumulation and labor growth, whereas the contribution of the total factor productivity is too low. - Some results from the cross-country empirics are helpful in explaining the growth in Syria such as domestic investment. However, some other factors don’t seem to play their expected role. For instance, the relatively high growth rate in Syria is associated with poor institutions, a large size of government and a closed economy, which are considered main deterrents of growth according to cross-country empirics. Therefore, the results of cross-country growth empirics contradict, to a certain extent, with the results of country specific growth accounting in the case of Syria.