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The main objective of this study is to examine short-run and long-run relationship between natural resource rents and unemployment in OPEC and OAPEC countries over the period from 1991 to 2016, using PMG-ARDL model. The causality test shows that causality runs from total natural resources rents to unemployment. The study finds that, on the long-run, the impact of natural resource rents on unemployment rate is a positive significant impact, whether using aggregated data for natural resource rents or disaggregated (oil and natural gas). Almost all the variables have no significant impact on unemployment on the short-run. Contribution/ Originality:This study contributes in the existing literature by investigating the impact of natural resource rents on unemployment. This study is one of very few studies which have disaggregated natural resources and studying the effect of each one of the components of natural resources not only the aggregate level.

This paper focuses on assessing the validity of the triple deficit hypothesis in fourteen Middle Eastern and Northern African (MENA) countries between 1999 and 2018, using a non-linear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model. Although many studies have used different methods to address this issue, they often conclude that the relationship between the budget deficit, the current account deficit, and the savinginvestment gap is a symmetric relationship. This study claims that it is possible to shed new light on this issue by introducing non-linearity into studies on the relationship between these three deficits using the recently developed NARDL technique. This paper provides evidence for the existence of a non-linear relationship between the current account deficit, budget deficit, and saving-investment gap. It also shows that the triple deficit hypothesis is valid in the long-term. On the contrary, the relationship between external and internal deficits is negative in the short-term, which means that there is a triple divergence. Contribution/Originality: This study contributes to the existing literature by introducing non-linearity into studies of the triple deficit hypothesis. This is the first time that the NARDL model has been used in the analysis of this hypothesis. 1. INTRODUCTION Governments often set goals to increase investment and capital formation, accumulate more savings, decrease consumption, and redistribute resources among different sectors. These objectives can be accomplished by enhancing government spending or cutting taxes. This could reduce the fiscal balance and discourage private investment, which would have a negative effect on economic growth (Bhat & Sharma, 2018). Not only do many countries all over the world suffer from a budget deficit, they have also witnessed current account deficit as well. The external and internal positions of any country can be determined by these deficits. Countries that suffer from both long-term budget deficits and current account deficits face multiple significant and long-lasting problems that will affect their economic growth (Bayramoğlu & Öztürk, 2018). A current account deficit may lead to a decline in a country's competitiveness, an outflow of investment to other countries, and a reduction of foreign reserves (Ahmad, Aworinde, & Martin, 2015). Economists have tried to find the relationship between the budget deficit representing adjustments in fiscal policy and the current account deficit representing the balance of the nation's foreign transactions.

Article HistoryAttention has been given to the attraction of foreign direct investments for many countries worldwide. The main objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between fiscal space and FDI in a number of developing countries. A principal component analysis across official development assistance (ODA), domestic revenue mobilization, deficit financing whether domestic or foreign, and reprioritization and efficiency of expenditures has been used to derive an overall fiscal space index. Subsequently, a FE-GLS model has been employed for a panel data of 50 developing countries over the period from 2000 to 2016. The regression shows that fiscal space and its four pillars have positive, significant impact on attracting FDI. Contribution/ Originality:The paper contributes the first logical analysis of how fiscal space affects FDI. This study contributes in the existing literature as previous studies usually use an indicator as a proxy of fiscal space while this study uses principal component analysis across official development assistance, revenue mobilization, deficit financing, and reprioritization and efficiency of expenditures in order to derive an overall fiscal space index.