Investissements directs étrangers et productivité : Quelles interactions dans le cas des pays du Moyen Orient et d’Afrique du Nord ?

The objective of this paper is to investigate empirically whether there is any evidence that Foreign Direct investment (fdi) has had a positive impact on productivity in Middle East and North African (meda-9) countries. To this end, a panel data set over the period 1960-2004 was used. Our results suggest that the foreign presence does not increase productivity in a panel of 63 countries. On the other hand, education has a positive and significant effect on productivity in the whole of the sample (although its impact on economic growth is negative). These results remain the same in the case of meda-9 countries. We show finally a strong correlation between the quality of human resources and fdi spillovers.