The Determinants of Global Competitiveness of Economy: A Dynamic Panel Approach Applied to the WAEMU Countries

Abstract

This paper examines the determinants of the global competitiveness of the WAEMU economy applying a dynamic panel approach from 2011 to 2017. After providing a synthesis of the both theoretical and empirical debates on the subject, we derived a dynamic panel model which estimation was reached using the system generalized method of moments (GMM). The result of the estimation shows that competitiveness lagged by one period, financial development, GDP per capita, internal absorption and foreign trade taxes positively and significantly affect the global competitiveness of WAEMU countries, while economic openness, the inflation rate and the quality of institutions have a negative and significant contribution.