Responsiveness of the MENA Economic Growth to the EU Financial Integration: A Problem Evaluation

Department of Economics, University of Isfahan, Iran   Ahmad Googerdchian   Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Isfahan, Iran     Abstract   Implementing a currency :::union::: may lead members to face financial crisis if their financial markets are not ready to adopt themselves to a new situation. There are still problems like ownership concentration and self-governing states cause limitation in economic growth, financial development, and the ability of a country to take advantage of financial integration. The evidence is that the proportion of global financial flows dedicated to the low- and middle-income developing economies, decreased after the Asian crisis of 1997-98 (Das, 2006). These problems explain why the impact of financial integration has been limited and why it can lead to capital flight and financial crises. In this study, we develop an analytical framework of economic growth and assessing special and differential treatment of currency :::union::: (a subject of financial integration) members (like the EU) and apply this framework to MENA countries. We propose specifically that one can evaluate the "average" impact of the currency :::union::: membership on growth of the countries. It reveals the fact that the routine program evaluation can be for all the EU and MENA members. We will call this treated or untreated, respectively. Next, we predict such outcomes for a group of countries based on matching of their characteristics. Hence we use the matching method to make a relationship between a response variable (economic growth) and a treatment variable (financial integration) experimentally in the economies of the EU and MENA. JEL Classification: C26, F10, O10.