Working Paper Series – Arab Planning Institute – A Socio-Economic Taxonomy of Arab Countries: Imed Limam.

A Socio-Economic Taxonomy of Arab Countries

Imed Limam

January 1998

Many classifications of Arab countries are based on arbitrary criteria and on a subjective delimitation of groups that rely on commonly used stereotypes. These classifications have also neglected several important socio-economic characteristics of the Arab countries.
The paper attempts to adopt an overall as well as sector-specific classifications of Arab countries based on a wide range of socio-economic variables, over three time periods, using different multivariate statistical methods for classification. The results show that ?oil-versus-non-oil? represents the most meaningful criterion to adopt overall as well as sector-specific classifications of the Arab countries. Income level and the degree of diversification of the economies are found to be of some relevance in certain sector-specific classifications. The results also reveal some important taxonomies of Arab economies. The most obvious is that the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) represent the most homogeneous group of Arab countries with respect to the main socio-economic variables used in the paper.

http://www.arab-api.org/wps/wps9801.htm