حقبة ما بعد النفط في المملكة العربية السعودية : مسوغات التنوع الاقتصادي

Abstract EN

Economic diversification is important for establishing sustainable economic growth.

Therefore, an economy that is highly dependent on natural resources is in danger of instability or even collapse if the price of such commodity decreases in the global market.

As well, economic diversification positively contributes to create jobs, fighting corruption, and improving the institutional quality of countries.

The Saudi government has issued 10 development plans over 1970-2015, each covering five years, and economic diversification is a main objective of all these plans.

For that reason, the objective of this study is to examine the drivers of economic diversification such as natural resources, private sector, trade liberalization, foreign direct investment (FDI), financial development, and human development in Saudi Arabia during this period.

Using the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), we find that oil price and oil production have the highest contribution on economic growth in Saudi Arabia, followed by foreign trade and private sector.

While the contributions of financial development, FDI and human development are positive but insignificant.

These empirical insights are of particular interest to policymakers as they help build sound economic policies to sustain economic growth