Transportation facilitates mobilization that is a main need for human daily life transferring people or goods both locally and internationally. Transportation is fundamental for economic activities and social development as found by literature, which stressed on the importance of studying this relationship in the opposite direction as well. The current study is investigating the impact of socioeconomic factors on transportation in Egypt using air transport due to data availability, employing vector error correction model (VECM). Two models are estimated, investigating socioeconomic variables (employment, income and population) impact on air passenger transport at first model in addition to infrastructure and cost or airfares using oil prices. While second model investigate socioeconomic variables impact on air freight in addition to customs and cost as control variables. The analysis found that income and population have positive significant impact, while cost has negative impact on transportation. Employment and infrastructure both have positive significant impact at first model, while customs have negative significant impact at second model. The results suggest reduction and stabilization of transportation rates and customs, and show the importance of infrastructure development.

Digitization of payment facilitate easier and faster payment which increase transactions volume in the economy that imply on more shipping of goods. The paper analyzes short and long-run dynamics deploying panel ARDL "Autoregressive Distributed Lag" approach based on specification and model examination. The study estimated three models investigating impact of digital payment on maritime and air freight transport, as well as, investigating main determinants of digital payment for the period from 2000 till 2020 for 16 countries in MENA region "Middle East and North Africa". Main results are positive significance of digital payment, internet, mobile and banking usage on transportation. Main determinants of digital payment found to be income, mobile, internet and transportation which indicate bi directional relationship between transportation and digital payment. The results recommend that digital payment should be considered in policy designing. MENA countries should enhance digital payment, and focus on intensifying access to mobile and Internet.

The current study investigated transportation role in attracting FDI inflows to MENA region, from 2000 to 2020. An investigation is carried out focusing on the impact of different transportation modes (Air, maritime, and road) on attracting FDI. The analysis employed econometrics techniques based on the ARDL approach specified after data investigation. Two models are estimated using Cross sectional-error correction model CS-ECM and bias error correction Jack-knife model. The results found a positive significance of air and maritime transport at both short and long-run, also, positive significance of lagged FDI values that shows existence of dynamism in FDI, clarifying the importance of incremental gained information about host countries and investment opportunities. Further analysis of bi-variate causal relationships among transportation, market size and FDI inflows carried out using Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012), which found bi-directional relationships between each of maritime, air, and road transport, as well as, market size, with FDI. The results show importance of transportation development as an integral part of FDI strategies for attracting FDI, particularly to MENA countries, which should be taken into consideration in future strategies and policies.