Capital Formation in Monetary Growth Models: An Empirical Study of Selected Arab Countries

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors affecting capital formation in selected Arab Countries. These countries are Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. It adopts neoclassical monetary growth models derived from Sidrauski model to examine the substitution relationship between money and capital. Further analysis has been conducted to examine the complementarity relationship between money and capitalthat was driven based on Mackinnon argument. In his argument Mackinnon objected the perfect substitution relationship between capital and money in developing countries, where financial markets are immature and inefficient. Accordingly, investors will depend on self financing, where savings are held in money. As a result, an increase in money demand will contribute in increasing capital. Moreover, Mackinnon emphasizes the role of government expenditure in improving capital stock. The analysis has been performed with unbalanced pooled data, and models have been tested by using the GLS method considering fixed and random effects. The results indicate that self-financing and government expenditure play a significant role in improving capital stock. These results are consistent with Mackinnon argument and might explain the contribution of money supply in improving capital stock in developing countries.