Does women empowerment Granger-cause economic growth or the other way around? evidence from Iceland

• Main Authors: Khan, Azima, Masih, Mansur
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: C22 - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; C58 - Financial Econometrics; J16 - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination; Iceland
• Online Access: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/111186/; https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/111186/1/MPRA_paper_111186.pdf

Women empowerment is a subject that is considered crucial for the development and economic progress of a country. It is a much discussed and highlighted issue in the international arena with the United Nations and other leading financial and human development organizations. On an international level, countries like Iceland, Ireland and Norway are ranked as the most gender-empowered, while Muslim countries like Pakistan, Syria and Yemen rank as the least. We use the standard time series techniques for the analysis and use Iceland as a case study. Our empirical results tend to indicate that there exists a bidirectional Granger-causality between the focused variables. The women empowerment factors have a substantial effect on economic growth and vice versa. The findings are plausible and have strong policy implications.