Impact of Saudi's Membership in Global and Arab Economic Blocs on its Agricultural Foreign Trade

In recent years, the world has witnessed many changes in international economic relations, and the global system has crystallized into major economic blocs aimed at strengthening the position of these blocs in the framework of global international trade and economic stability. Accordingly, the research aims to study the impact of the accession of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the membership of some economic blocs on Saudi agricultural foreign trade during the time period (1995-2019). By depend on both descriptive and quantitative statistical analysis. To study the evolution of the value of agricultural exports and imports and the most important factors affecting each of them, used of some indicators of export competitiveness such as a measure of geographical and commodity concentration. Also used the simultaneous equations method to build an econometric model to analyze the structure of agricultural foreign trade and its estimation by Two-Stage least squares (2SLS) method, the paper predicts the future of Saudi agricultural foreign trade. The research relied on secondary data. The results of the study expect that the average per capita share of agricultural exports, imports and agricultural Balance Deficit will reach about 600, 3.600 and 2.900 thousand riyals, respectively, during the year 2026.

Does Foreign Direct Investment Generate Long-Term Growth in Ghana?

In pursuant to sustainable economic growth on the ticket of FDI-led growth hypothesis, the government of Ghana has instituted a myriad of thoughtful policy reforms to help boost the economy to realize a self-sustaining economic growth. To some extent, the policies might have paid off as the country was named the highest recipient of FDI in West Africa in 2018. However, the supposed upsurge in the inflow of foreign direct investment in the country and its expected long-run spillover benefits have not been tangibly felt in the region as the economy continues to oscillate. Therefore, this study utilized two methods; the autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) and the variance decomposition method (VDM) to empirically examine economic growth of Ghana as a function of foreign direct investment (FDI) whiles controlling for exchange rate, financial development, trade oppeness and employment rate. The results of the study endorses the FDI-led growth for Ghana by indicating that a positive long run causal impact flows from FDI to economic growth. The findings from the VDM test affirm the results are robust and reliable. Therefore, the study suggests that government should amplify FDI inflow via policies like incentives to draw more foreign investors directly into other sectors other than the conventional sectors gratified by foreign investors.

The Governance and Tourism: A Case of Developing Countries

Tourism is a rapidly growing industry globally and it is contributing a significant part in the GDP of the economies. In the literature, a variety of determinants of tourism are discussed theoretically and empirically but the effect of national governance on tourism is rarely discussed. This study investigates the effect of governance on tourism development in a panel of 65 developing economies for the time period of 2000-2015. Tourism development is measured by an index of three components, i.e. spending by international tourists, spending by local tourists and tourism’s share in total employment in the economy. For governance an index is constructed based on indicators of government effectiveness, political stability, regulatory quality, rule of law, and voice and accountability. Data has been taken from World Development Indicators (WDI), Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) estimation indicates that governance positively influence tourism development and its components, i.e. foreign visitors spending, domestic tourist spending and contribution of tourism in employment. The indicators of governance, i.e. government effectiveness, political stability, regulatory quality, rule of law and voice and accountability also positively affect tourism development. Terrorism, environmental degradation and corruption have shown adverse effect on tourism development as well as components of tourism development. The economic growth and trade openness have encouraging effect on tourism development and its comments. It is concluded that through good governance tourism may be developed but terrorism and corruption are needed to be eliminated.