IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/halshs-02409029.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Demographics in MENA countries: a major driver for economic growth

Author

Listed:
  • Yeganeh Forouheshfar

    (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres, IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres, LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme)

  • Najat El Mekkaoui

    (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres, IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres, LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, DIAL - Développement, institutions et analyses de long terme)

  • Hippolyte d'Albis

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

MENA region is undergoing rapid demographic transition, where 50% of the population is under the age 25 and high youth unemployment rates are argued to be one of the main sources of political instability. Fighting youth ex- clusion from work is one of the main challenges in the region. In this paper we evaluate the economic impact of the demographic transition for selected coun- tries which experience di_erent speeds of transition, namely: Iran, Morocco and Egypt. The impact of demographic shift on the evolution of human capital stock and physical capital stock, has been highlighted by the literature. Since _nan- cial markets play a crucial role to allocate capital and channel the funds to the productive sector, it is hence fundamental to take into account the role of the _nancial markets in the growth process associated with demographic change. We have developed a general equilibrium overlapping generations model with a cost for capital mobilisation as a proxy for _nancial markets' e_ciency. We have found that the demographic shift will be an important driver for growth in the upcoming decades. Furthermore, our results show that a more e_cient _nancial sector leads to better economic performance. Speci_cally, youth are the primary bene_ciaries: an increase in the _nancial sector e_ciency can reduce up to 8 percentage points of the youngest age group unemployment.

Suggested Citation

  • Yeganeh Forouheshfar & Najat El Mekkaoui & Hippolyte d'Albis, 2019. "Demographics in MENA countries: a major driver for economic growth," Working Papers halshs-02409029, HAL.
  • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02409029
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02409029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02409029/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David E. Bloom & David Canning, 2004. "Global demographic change : dimensions and economic significance," Proceedings - Economic Policy Symposium - Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, issue Aug, pages 9-56.
    2. Axel Börsch‐Supan & Alexander Ludwig & Joachim Winter, 2006. "Ageing, Pension Reform and Capital Flows: A Multi‐Country Simulation Model," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(292), pages 625-658, November.
    3. Jeremy Greenwood & Juan Sanchez & Cheng Wang, 2013. "Quantifying the Impact of Financial Development on Economic Development," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 16(1), pages 194-215, January.
    4. Jean Arcand & Enrico Berkes & Ugo Panizza, 2015. "Too much finance?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 20(2), pages 105-148, June.
    5. de la Croix, David & Pierrard, Olivier & Sneessens, Henri R., 2013. "Aging and pensions in general equilibrium: Labor market imperfections matter," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 104-124.
    6. de la Croix, David & Pierrard, Olivier & Sneessens, Henri R., 2013. "Aging and pensions in general equilibrium: Labor market imperfections matter," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 104-124.
    7. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11049 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. d'Albis, Hippolyte, 2007. "Demographic structure and capital accumulation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 411-434, January.
    9. Lesmond, David A & Ogden, Joseph P & Trzcinka, Charles A, 1999. "A New Estimate of Transaction Costs," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(5), pages 1113-1141.
    10. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    11. Author-Name: John Geanakoplos & Michael Magill & Martine Quinzii, 2004. "Demography and the Long-Run Predictability of the Stock Market," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(1), pages 241-326.
    12. Asli Demirguc-Kunt & Leora Klapper & Dorothe Singer & Saniya Ansar & Jake Hess, 2018. "Global Findex Database 2017 [La base de datos Global Findex 2017]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 29510, December.
    13. Ben J. Heijdra & Laurie S. M. Reijnders, 2016. "Human Capital Accumulation and the Macroeconomy in an Ageing Society," De Economist, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 297-334, September.
    14. Boucekkine, Raouf & de la Croix, David & Licandro, Omar, 2002. "Vintage Human Capital, Demographic Trends, and Endogenous Growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 340-375, June.
    15. Ben Heijdra & Jochen Mierau, 2011. "The Individual Life Cycle and Economic Growth: An Essay on Demographic Macroeconomics," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 63-87, March.
    16. Heijdra, Ben J. & Ligthart, Jenny E., 2006. "The Macroeconomic Dynamics Of Demographic Shocks," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(3), pages 349-370, June.
    17. David E. BLOOM & Michael KUHN & Klaus PRETTNER, 2017. "Africa’s Prospects for Enjoying a Demographic Dividend," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(1), pages 63-76, March.
    18. Favero, Carlo A. & Gozluklu, Arie E. & Tamoni, Andrea, 2011. "Demographic Trends, the Dividend-Price Ratio, and the Predictability of Long-Run Stock Market Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(5), pages 1493-1520, October.
    19. Pissarides, Christopher A, 1985. "Short-run Equilibrium Dynamics of Unemployment Vacancies, and Real Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(4), pages 676-690, September.
    20. Marcus Hagedorn & Iourii Manovskii, 2008. "The Cyclical Behavior of Equilibrium Unemployment and Vacancies Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1692-1706, September.
    21. Mortensen, Dale & Pissarides, Christopher, 2011. "Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Theory of Unemployment," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 1-19.
    22. Diamond, Peter A, 1981. "Mobility Costs, Frictional Unemployment, and Efficiency," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 798-812, August.
    23. Andrew B. Abel, 2003. "The Effects of a Baby Boom on Stock Prices and Capital Accumulation in the Presence of Social Security," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(2), pages 551-578, March.
    24. Vegard Skirbekk, 2004. "Age and Individual Productivity: A Literature Survey," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 2(1), pages 133-154.
    25. Menahem E. Yaari, 1965. "Uncertain Lifetime, Life Insurance, and the Theory of the Consumer," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(2), pages 137-150.
    26. Chakraborty, Shankha, 2004. "Endogenous lifetime and economic growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 119-137, May.
    27. Michael Magill, 2004. "Demography and the Stock Market," Theory workshop papers 658612000000000080, UCLA Department of Economics.
    28. Ben Naceur, Samy & Ghazouani, Samir & Omran, Mohammed, 2008. "Does stock market liberalization spur financial and economic development in the MENA region?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 673-693, December.
    29. Naceur, Samy Ben & Ghazouani, Samir, 2007. "Stock markets, banks, and economic growth: Empirical evidence from the MENA region," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 297-315, June.
    30. Pagano, Marco, 1993. "Financial markets and growth: An overview," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 613-622, April.
    31. Liao, Pei-Ju, 2011. "Does demographic change matter for growth?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(5), pages 659-677, June.
    32. Assaad, Ragui & Hendy, Rana & Lassassi, Moundir & Yassin, Shaimaa, 2018. "Explaining the MENA Paradox: Rising Educational Attainment, Yet Stagnant Female Labor Force Participation," IZA Discussion Papers 11385, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    33. Joaquim Oliveira Martins & Frédéric Gonand & Pablo Antolín & Christine de la Maisonneuve & Kwang-Yeol Yoo, 2005. "The Impact of Ageing on Demand, Factor Markets and Growth," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 420, OECD Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ben J. Heijdra & Klaus Prettner, 2020. "Putting People Back into the Picture: Some Studies in Demographic Economics," De Economist, Springer, vol. 168(2), pages 147-152, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lee, R., 2016. "Macroeconomics, Aging, and Growth," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 59-118, Elsevier.
    2. Dieppe, Alistair & Mourinho Félix, Ricardo & Marchiori, Luca & Grech, Owen & Albani, Maria & Lalouette, Laure & Kulikov, Dmitry & Papadopoulou, Niki & Sideris, Dimitris & Irac, Delphine & Gordo Mora, , 2015. "Public debt, population ageing and medium-term growth," Occasional Paper Series 165, European Central Bank.
    3. Anna Batyra & David de la Croix & Olivier Pierrard & Henri Sneessens, 2016. "Structural changes in the labor market and the rise of early retirement in Europe," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2016022, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    4. Vogel, Edgar & Ludwig, Alexander & Börsch-Supan, Axel, 2017. "Aging and pension reform: extending the retirement age and human capital formation," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(1), pages 81-107, January.
    5. repec:ecb:ecbops:2014165 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Pestieau, Pierre & Ponthiere, Gregory, 2016. "Longevity Variations And The Welfare State," Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 82(2), pages 207-239, June.
    7. Gehringer, Agnieszka & Prettner, Klaus, 2019. "Longevity And Technological Change," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(4), pages 1471-1503, June.
    8. Loumrhari, Ghizlan, 2016. "Vieillissement démographique et réforme paramétrique des retraites. Les enseignements d’un modèle EGC-GI pour le Maroc [Ageing and pension reform. A computational olg model for Morocco]," MPRA Paper 74077, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Luca Marchiori & Olivier Pierrard & Henri R. Sneessens, 2011. "Demography, capital flows and unemployment," BCL working papers 69, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    10. Kuhn, Michael & Prettner, Klaus, 2016. "Growth and welfare effects of health care in knowledge-based economies," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 100-119.
    11. Aleksander Berentsen & Guido Menzio & Randall Wright, 2011. "Inflation and Unemployment in the Long Run," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 371-398, February.
    12. Brito, Paulo, 2014. "Interest rates and endogenous population growth: joint age-dependent dynamics," MPRA Paper 58656, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Auclert, Adrien & Malmberg, Hannes & Martenet, Frederic & Rognlie, Matthew, 2021. "Demographics, Wealth, and Global Imbalances in the Twenty-First Century," CEPR Discussion Papers 16470, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Ansgar Belke & Christian Dreger & Richard Ochmann, 2015. "Do wealthier households save more? The impact of the demographic factor," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 163-173, June.
    15. Bloom, David E. & Kuhn, Michael & Prettner, Klaus, 2018. "Health and Economic Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 11939, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. Fedotenkov, I., 2012. "Pensions and ageing in a globalizing world. International spillover effects via trade and factor mobility," Other publications TiSEM 8830bc21-4138-4479-8459-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    17. Marten Hillebrand, 2008. "Pension Systems, Demographic Change, and the Stock Market," Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Springer, number 978-3-540-77972-8, October.
    18. Brito, Paulo & Dilão, Rui, 2010. "Equilibrium price dynamics in an overlapping-generations exchange economy," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 343-355, May.
    19. Morvay, Endre, 2012. "Munkapiac keresési súrlódásokkal [Job-seeking on the labour market, with frictions]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 139-163.
    20. Etienne Gagnon & Benjamin K. Johannsen & David López-Salido, 2021. "Understanding the New Normal: The Role of Demographics," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 69(2), pages 357-390, June.
    21. Annarita Baldanzi & Klaus Prettner & Paul Tscheuschner, 2019. "Longevity-induced vertical innovation and the tradeoff between life and growth," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(4), pages 1293-1313, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial efficiency; Development; MENA region; Demographic transition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • E17 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications
    • O16 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02409029. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.