What do we know about productivity in Arab economies: the challenges of generating multifactor productivity (MFP) estimates at industry level

The growth gap between the Arab countries and the rest of the world has been increasing since the 1990s, despite the economic and political transition in the Arab world. Against this background, the analysis of the empirics of growth in this part of the world becomes significant. Our attempts to quantify and examine the growth dynamics in the Arab world point to the lack of data for undertaking quality research. Reviewing the available information on three chosen countries – Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia – from different international data sets, we assess the challenges for the creation of an Arab KLEMS dataset which would allow estimation of consistent MFP estimates and an examination of empirics of growth – both at the level of the economy as well as subsectors of the economy. In this light, we identify the problems that need to be overcome if MFP estimates can be created for our three chosen countries, based on which we develop a roadmap for estimation of MFP for the Arab world in general.