Effect of Education Sector Expenditure on Economic Growth in Arab Spring Countries: A Panel Data Analysis

Abstract

From the second half of the twentieth century, human capital began to be added more and more, particularly to the basic factors of production considered as labor, capital, entrepreneurs and natural resources in classical economic theory. With this structural change in production, human capital development has become very important for internal growth models. Nowadays, as the strength of arms power in production is greatly reduced, brain power has increased in importance and the idea of people investing in themselves has been widely accepted. Education, which is one of the important dynamics of human capital with health, plays an important role in this context. Increasing the level of success with the higher education level, recruitment of qualified workers, better employment opportunities and increased earnings are significant contributors to growth and prosperity. The study explores the dynamics of education and economic growth expenditure in selected five major Arab countries with balanced panel data from 2000 to 2014. The results of Pedroni, Kao and Johansen Fisher 's co- integration show that there is a long- term balance between education and economic growth expenditure in all countries. The study argues that education is one of the important economic growth ingredients in all five major Arab spring countries. Education should be given priority and a handsome of the government's total expenditure on education should be made by enhancing different elementary, higher and technical education in the respective nations to have the skilled manpower for the long-term economic development.