The ICT, financial development, energy consumption and economic growth nexus in MENA countries: dynamic panel CS-ARDL evidence

This paper analyses the nexus between renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, financial development, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) diffusion and economic growth, in MENA countries, over the period 1980-2018. We use the novel Cross-Section augmented Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) estimation technique which accounts for cross-sectional dependence and cross-country heterogeneity issues. We find a positive impact of renewable and non-renewable energy on economic growth, but a negative effect of financial development on economic growth. We also find a positive and statistically significant influence of ICT on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Renewable energy and ICT diffusion can be considered important determinants of improved economic activity, job creation and better environmental quality. Pairwise Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality tests were used to examine the causal relations among the variables. The findings of this study have considerable policy implications for the selected countries.