Does Digital Financial Inclusion Affect Economic Growth? New Insights from MENA Region

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Digital Economy. Emerging Technologies and Business Innovation (ICDEc 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 485))

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Abstract

Digital financial services have been a key driver of finance inclusion in recent years more specially from 2014 in Africa and continue to accelerate since the onset of the coronavirus disease pandemic in China. Although these terms have attracted growing attention from academics and policy makers, the effect of digital financial inclusion on economic growth has not been studied sufficiently. Therefore, this research examines the association between traditional financial services, digital financial inclusion and economic growth on a set of 14 of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries over the period 2000–2021. Using the PMG-ARDL and GMM-System approaches, to capture both short- and long-term relationships concurrently by STATA 17 and Winrats 9.0, we find that the exogenous component of digital financial inclusion is positively correlated with GDP per capita, concluding that digital financial inclusion was better than traditional financial services. Empirical estimates of internet users and mobile subscriptions are key determinants of digital financial inclusion in this region. The results of this research will then be used to inform policy recommendations in areas related to the digitization of financial services to promote finance inclusion.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Visit the siteweb: https://www.findevgateway.org/fr/blog/2022/07/global-findex.

  2. 2.

    Visit the siteweb: https://www.worldbank.org/publication/globalfindex.

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Correspondence to Kamel Helali .

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Ben Abdallah, A., Becha, H., Kalai, M., Helali, K. (2023). Does Digital Financial Inclusion Affect Economic Growth? New Insights from MENA Region. In: Jallouli, R., Bach Tobji, M.A., Belkhir, M., Soares, A.M., Casais, B. (eds) Digital Economy. Emerging Technologies and Business Innovation. ICDEc 2023. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 485. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42788-6_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42788-6_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-42787-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-42788-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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