Foreign Direct Investment and Accumulation of the Technological Capital in Developing Countries: Interdependence and Causality in the Case of Tunisia

The interest of this paper is mainly to highlight the impact of FDI on the long-term growth while centralizing the analysis on the concept of positive externalities or spillovers. In the same order of ideas, we will discuss the role of FDI on the Tunisian economic growth. We want to emphasize the contribution of these investments in the accumulation of technological capital in Tunisia and thereafter in the economic growth.

To verify the role of FDI to accumulate the technological capital in Tunisia, we have constructed an econometric model. On the explained side, we have the technological capital represented by the total number of patents deposed by Tunisian inventors. On the explanatory side, we have introduced a sample of economic variables, largely used in the previous works. To treat the data which tend on 38 years from 1975 to 2012, we have used the software Eviews 7. The obtained results allow us to say that, despite the efforts exerted by Tunisia to attract FDI having the power to enhance the local technological capital, the quality of these investments and the nature of MNC implementation does not significantly affect the quality of Tunisian technological capital except a few sectors where the positive impact of FDI is still marginal.