آیا آزاد سازی بازار سهام باعث توسعه مالی و اقتصادی در منطقه خاورمیانه و شمال آفریقا خواهد شد؟

In order to investigate the impact of stock market liberalization on economic growth in the MENA region, we need to place our contribution in the economic growth literature. Our study is related to the literature on policy impacting growth rather than the debate on “convergence” between low-income and high-income countries which dominates the current research on economic growth. Our study is one of the few studies that focus on MENA countries. Several issues are addressed about the impact of stock market liberalization on economic growth. Using annual data from 11 MENA countries over the 1979–2005 period, the empirical results indicate that stock market liberalization has no effect on economic and investment growth, whereas the impact on stock market development is negative in the short run but turns positive in the long run. However, when we include certain pre-conditions for liberalizing the stock market, we find that a more developed stock market prior to liberalization; less government intervention and by not fully opening the economy to foreign trade, reinforces the positive impact of liberalization on stock market development. These results could have some important policy implications in which domestic financial reforms should precede policies that aim at liberalizing the stock market. This is not only easier and faster to accomplish, but from a policy sequencing perspective it pays to reform the trade regime before totally liberalizing the (portfolio component of the) capital account. In conclusion, reforms should first and foremost start in the domestic economy before opening it fully to foreign participation. Our results are robust to several specifications but they should be tentative since there may be some measurement error in the calculation of several variables which could downward bias the estimates. Journal of Comparative Economics36 (4) (2008) 673–693.

A large number of emerging markets have embarked on a series of reforms in the last twenty years, including liberalization of the domestic stock markets. Stock market liberalization is a decision made by a country's government which allows foreign investors to purchase shares in that country's stock markets (Henry, 2000a). Despite the intense reform agenda, the performance of domestic capital markets in many emerging economies has been well under expectation. Although some countries experienced development of their local markets, this growth in most cases is disappointing compared to developed countries. These reforms have stimulated an important amount of theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of stock market liberalization. The first looks at the financial implications of stock market liberalization. It has been shown that stock market liberalization leads to an increase in equity prices (Bekaert and Harvey, 2000), a decrease in the cost of capital (Stulz, 1999), a reduction in equity risk premium (Ahimud et al., 1997), and an increase of the size and liquidity of the domestic stock markets (Fuchs-Schündeln and Funke, 2001). The second looks at the real effects of stock market liberalization, and shows that such liberalization leads to increased investment (Henry, 2000a), and higher economic growth (Bekaert et al., 2001 and Bekaert et al., 2005).

This study is concerned with the implications of stock market liberalization on economic and investment growth and on the financial system development in the MENA region. The study was conducted using a sample of 11 countries from the MENA region over the 1979–2005 period. We first compare the performance of several financial system indicators prior to and after liberalizing the stock exchange. Through a non-parametric treatment of some key variables, we document an improvement of the performance of the financial system. Market capitalization, as an indicator of stock market development, and credit to the private sector, as an indicator of banking development, point out a significant improvement when we compare pre- and post-liberalization periods.