Foreign Direct Investment: a comparative study of the attraction of Moroccan and Tunisian economies (In French)

The existing literature points to a series of determinants of FDI attraction such as the size of markets, the costs of labor, infrastructure, the educational level of the labor force, or policy reforms and political stability… However, potential trade-offs or complementarities between similar countries are rarely underscored as factors explaining the performance or the under-performance in attracting FDI. In this paper we try to determine if there is an inverse (positive) relationship between FDI flows in Tunisia and in Morocco. We test this hypothesis is tested in a VAR model (Vector Autogressive Regression) and we show that FDI in Tunisia attract, in an indirect way, the FDI in Morocco, probably by improving the climate of business in the region. But, meanwhile, Morocco undergoes a significant diversion of FDI in favour of Tunisia in the long run.