Regional employment growth and spatial dependencies in Algeria (1998-2005)‎

الملخص EN

This paper examines the economic forces that explain regional growth in Algeria in the period 1998-2005.

Since the beginning of structural reforms in the early 1980s, the Algerian economy has experienced a transition from a soviet-kind planned economy to a market economy.

Furthermore, from 1990 to 2000, Algeria experienced many political and economic troubles and was even forced by the IMF to follow a structural adjustment program between 1994 and 1998.

This paper studies the relation between industrial employment growth per capita in 48 Algerian regions and the geographical location of those regions in terms of immediate neighborhood.

Our results demonstrate that there is no convergence process between the Algerian regions.

In other words, “rich” Algerian regions stay rich whereas relatively poor regions stay poor.

In that vein, the significance of the spatial dependence coefficient may reveal that there are convergence clubs in Algeria.

Growth dynamics in Algeria are not equitably distributed.