โ Scribed by Carlo Maria Rossotto; Khalid Sekkat; Aristomene Varoudakis
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
This paper investigates the potential impact of opening up telecommunications to competition in MENA on this sector performance and on the participation of the region in the world economy. The latter is assessed with respect to manufactured exports, participation in production network and attractiveness of FDI. The paper first introduces a model to assess the benefits of telecommunications liberalization on sector performance. The assessment is based on three key factors: (i) degree of effective competition in fixed and mobile networks; (ii) openness to foreign investment; and (iii) pro-competitive regulation. The results confirm that liberalization and open markets are conducive to higher efficiency in the telecommunications sector. Regarding the integration of the region in the World economy, the analysis confirms that, after controlling for the influence of other structural factors, better performance of telecommunications strengthens export performance in manufacturing including exports of intermediate products. Moreover, by facilitating linkages with transnational production networks and reducing the cost of doing business, better telecommunications sector performance is found to be a determinant of foreign direct investment inflows in developing countries.
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