Özet:
This paper attempts an assessment of the relative importance of various shocks in accounting for output fluctuations in MENA countries. We decomposed macroeconomic shocks into country-specific, regional, and global sources, and using a small open economy SVAR model, we identify the relative importance of each shock in explaining output volatility in the 15 MENA countries. Our result show that country-specific factors account for most of the output volatility in the region. For less than half of the countries in the region, global shocks play a significant role in explaining output volatility. Contrary to some findings in the empirical literature, especially on Sub-Saharan Africa, the regional factor does not seem to have a statistically significant impact in any of the countries under consideration. The results are uniform and no statistically significant difference is observed for the countries in the MENA region. Furthermore, oil-exporting and oil-poor countries in the sample do not show any noticeable difference.
