ABSTRACT Understanding that Innovation is a major determinant of economic growth, this paper is investigating how to foster Innovation in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region given the institutional deficiencies suffered in many of its countries. More specifically, this paper is trying to find out how State-Business Relations (SBR) have contributed to Innovation capacities of the MENA. It also investigates whether SBR have counteracted some of the region's institutional deficiencies which hinder Innovation. While doing this, this paper differentiates between formal SBR (e.g. public private dialogues) and informal SBR (relations based on family, ethnic or political connections), and puts more theoretical emphasis on the National Innovation System (NIS) approach for fostering innovation. It uses regression analysis and provides three relatively (Innovation-wise) advanced non-Gulf MENA countries as examples for the sake of enriching the discussion through a comparative analysis; these are: Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. Using various multivariate panel OLS regressions, various important findings are obtained. The results suggest that stronger Business Associations, formal SBR and comprehensive institutional reform are needed for fostering Innovation in the MENA region. Even if Cronyism and crony-based informal SBR seem to provide a functional allocative mechanism counteracting some institutional deficiencies, yet, Cronyism do more harm than good to Innovation. Hence, institutional reform in the MENA region should also place more emphasis on eradicating Cronyism.

中文翻译：

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在中东和北非地区建立国家商务关系和创新

摘要了解到创新是经济增长的主要决定因素，鉴于许多国家在制度上存在缺陷，本文正在研究如何在中东和北非（MENA）地区促进创新。更具体地说，本文试图找出国家商业关系（SBR）如何促进中东和北非地区的创新能力。它还调查了SBR是否已抵消了该地区某些阻碍创新的体制缺陷。在此过程中，本文对正式的SBR（例如，公共私人对话）和非正式的SBR（基于家庭，种族或政治联系的关系）进行了区分，并将更多的理论重点放在了国家创新体系（NIS）上来促进创新。它使用了回归分析，并提供了三个相对（在创新方面）先进的非海湾中东和北非国家作为例子，以通过比较分析来丰富讨论。它们是：埃及，突尼斯和摩洛哥。使用各种多元面板OLS回归，可以获得各种重要发现。结果表明，需要加强企业协会，正式的SBR和全面的机构改革，以促进中东和北非地区的创新。即使克罗尼主义和基于克罗尼的非正式SBR似乎提供了弥补某些制度缺陷的功能分配机制，但是，克罗尼主义对创新的弊大于利。因此，中东和北非地区的体制改革也应更加重视消除克罗尼主义。