Abstract:

The relationship between financial integration and economic growth is a vital subject. The theoretical and empirical works of Gurley and Shaw 1955, McKinnon 1973; Quinn 1997; Levine and Zervos, 1998; Chan-Lau and Chen, 2001; Bekaert et al 2005; Levchenko et al. 2008; Mensi et al. 2010; Soumia and Benhabib 2012 revealed significant results. These economists affirmed that financial liberalization could help countries to increase their growth rate and ameliorate their life quality. The target of this work is to study financial integration effects of thirty-five years, from January 1981 until December 2014, on economic growth of the three Maghreb countries (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) using the ARDL approach to cointegration testing. Estimations’ results indicate that financial integration affects positively the economic growth of the Maghreb countries.