IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/85055.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Arab Spring was predictable in 2007: Empirics of Proof

Author

Listed:
  • Asongu, Simplice
  • Nwachukwu, Jacinta

Abstract

We model core demands for better governance (political, economic and institutional), more employment and less consumer price inflation using a methodological innovation on the complete elimination of cross-country differences in signals susceptible of sparking social revolts. The empirical evidence based on 14 MENA countries show that the Arab Spring was predictable in 2007 to occur between January 2011 and April 2012. While the findings predict the wave of cross-country revolutions with almost mathematical precision, caveats and cautions are discussed for the scholar to understand the expositional dimensions of the empirics.

Suggested Citation

  • Asongu, Simplice & Nwachukwu, Jacinta, 2017. "The Arab Spring was predictable in 2007: Empirics of Proof," MPRA Paper 85055, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:85055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/85055/1/MPRA_paper_85055.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John Ssozi & Simplice A. Asongu, 2016. "The Comparative Economics of Catch-up in Output per Worker, Total Factor Productivity and Technological Gain in Sub-Saharan Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 28(2), pages 215-228, June.
    2. Simplice A. Asongu, 2014. "Fighting African Capital Flight: Empirics on Benchmarking Policy Harmonization," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 11(1), pages 93-122, June.
    3. Antonio R Andres & Simplice A Asongu, 2013. "Global dynamic timelines for IPRs harmonization against software piracy," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(1), pages 874-880.
    4. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Mishra, Sagarika & Narayan, Seema, 2011. "Do market capitalization and stocks traded converge? New global evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2771-2781, October.
    5. Aisen, Ari & Veiga, Francisco Jose, 2006. "Does Political Instability Lead to Higher Inflation? A Panel Data Analysis," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(5), pages 1379-1389, August.
    6. Simplice A Asongu, 2013. "Modeling the future of knowledge economy: evidence from SSA and MENA countries," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(1), pages 612-624.
    7. Simplice Asongu, 2013. "Harmonizing IPRs on Software Piracy: Empirics of Trajectories in Africa," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(1), pages 45-60, November.
    8. Antonio Rodríguez Andrés & Simplice Asongu, 2016. "Global trajectories, dynamics, and tendencies of business software piracy," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 43(5), pages 780-800, October.
    9. Bruno, Giuseppe & De Bonis, Riccardo & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2012. "Do financial systems converge? New evidence from financial assets in OECD countries," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 141-155.
    10. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2016. "Revolution empirics: predicting the Arab Spring," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 439-482, September.
    11. Basil Jones, 2002. "Economic Integration and Convergence of Per Capita Income in West Africa," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 14(1), pages 18-47.
    12. Simplice A. Asongu, 2013. "African Stock Market Performance Dynamics: A Multidimensional Convergence Assessment," Journal of African Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 186-201, December.
    13. Fung, Michael K., 2009. "Financial development and economic growth: Convergence or divergence?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 56-67, February.
    14. Asongu, Simplice A. & Tchamyou, Vanessa S. & Minkoua N., Jules R. & Asongu, Ndemaze & Tchamyou, Nina P., 2018. "Fighting terrorism in Africa: Benchmarking policy harmonization," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 492(C), pages 1931-1957.
    15. David Kelsey & Sara le Roux, 2018. "Strategic ambiguity and decision-making: an experimental study," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 84(3), pages 387-404, May.
    16. David Kelsey & Sara Le Roux, 2017. "Dragon Slaying with Ambiguity: Theory and Experiments," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 19(1), pages 178-197, February.
    17. Giuseppe Bruno & Riccardo De Bonis, 2009. "Do financial systems converge? New evidence from household financial assets in selected OECD countries," IFC Bulletins chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Proceedings of the IFC Conference on "Measuring financial innovation and its impact", Basel, 26-27 August 2008, volume 31, pages 383-401, Bank for International Settlements.
    18. Nazrul Islam, 1995. "Growth Empirics: A Panel Data Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(4), pages 1127-1170.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Simplice A. Asongu & Vanessa S. Tchamyou & Paul N. Acha-Anyi, 2020. "Who Is Who in Knowledge Economy in Africa?," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(2), pages 425-457, June.
    2. Simplice A. Asongu, 2017. "Knowledge Economy Gaps, Policy Syndromes, and Catch-Up Strategies: Fresh South Korean Lessons to Africa," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 8(1), pages 211-253, March.
    3. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2016. "Rational Asymmetric Development, Piketty and Poverty in Africa," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 13(2), pages 221-246, December.
    4. Simplice Asongu & Jacinta Nwachukwu, 2018. "Fighting Terrorism: Empirics on Policy Harmonisation," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 19(3), pages 237-259, August.
    5. Asongu Simplice, 2014. "Fresh Patterns of Liberalization, Bank Return and Return Uncertainty in Africa," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 14/004, African Governance and Development Institute..
    6. Simplice A. Asongu, 2017. "The Comparative Economics of Knowledge Economy in Africa: Policy Benchmarks, Syndromes, and Implications," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 8(2), pages 596-637, June.
    7. Asongu, Simplice A. & Tchamyou, Vanessa S. & Minkoua N., Jules R. & Asongu, Ndemaze & Tchamyou, Nina P., 2018. "Fighting terrorism in Africa: Benchmarking policy harmonization," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 492(C), pages 1931-1957.
    8. Simplice Asongu, 2015. "Rational Asymmetric Development, Piketty and the Spirit of Poverty in Africa," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 15/006, African Governance and Development Institute..
    9. Simplice A. Asongu, 2014. "Fighting African Capital Flight: Empirics on Benchmarking Policy Harmonization," European Journal of Comparative Economics, Cattaneo University (LIUC), vol. 11(1), pages 93-122, June.
    10. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2016. "Revolution empirics: predicting the Arab Spring," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 51(2), pages 439-482, September.
    11. Simplice Asongu & Christelle Meniago, 2018. "Technology and persistence in global software piracy," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 43-63, October.
    12. Simplice A. Asongu & Joseph I. Uduji & Elda N. Okolo-Obasi, 2020. "Fighting African capital flight: trajectories, dynamics, and tendencies," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 6(1), pages 1-21, December.
    13. Simplice A Asongu, 2013. "On the Obituary of Scientific Knowledge Monopoly," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(4), pages 2718-2731.
    14. Asongu, Simplice & Andrés, Antonio R., 2015. "Trajectories in Knowledge Economy: Empirics from SSA and MENA countries," MPRA Paper 71786, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Asongu Simplice & Andrés Antonio, 2014. "Global trajectories, dynamics, and tendencies of business software piracy: benchmarking IPRs harmonization," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 14/011, African Governance and Development Institute..
    16. Asongu, Simplice A. & Andrés, Antonio R., 2020. "Trajectories of knowledge economy in SSA and MENA countries," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    17. Simplice A. Asongu, 2018. "Comparative sustainable development in sub‐Saharan Africa," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(6), pages 638-651, November.
    18. Simplice Asongu, 2014. "African Development: Beyond Income Convergence," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 82(3), pages 334-353, September.
    19. Simplice Asongu & Paul Acha-Anyi, 2017. "The Murder Epidemic: A Global Comparative Study," Working Papers of the African Governance and Development Institute. 17/059, African Governance and Development Institute..
    20. Asongu, Simplice A. & Odhiambo, Nicholas M., 2020. "Foreign direct investment, information technology and economic growth dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(1).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Arab Spring; Political Instability; Timing; Economic Growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N17 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Africa; Oceania
    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O20 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - General
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
    • P52 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:85055. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.