This study initially calculates export sophistication of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries to 
 make a comparison in the region and in between OPEC and non-OPEC countries for 2004-2016 period. 
 Secondly, short and long run empirical analysis are applied to examine the effect of export sophistication 
 on GDP per capita growth controlling for several macroeconomic variables. Lastly, panel VAR is utilized 
 to decompose the variation in growth rate. Empirical findings suggest positive effect of sophistication on 
 growth rate controlling for oil prices and OPEC membership and export sophistication is observed to be 
 the key variable to explain the variation in growth rate out of several candidate variables.