Estimating Egypt’s Potential Output: A Production Function Approach

The Egyptian economy has witnessed deterioration in its main macroeconomic indicators over the period (2008-2014). The main purpose of the paper was to estimate Egypt's potential output and identify the factors that might be responsible for the divergence of actual and potential output from each other. We used the production function approach to derive estimates of potential output and output gap over the period (1990-2014). The results of the analysis revealed that capital stock was the dominant factor contributing to GDP growth in Egypt, while the share of both labor and total factor productivity in GDP growth rate has been fluctuating over time. Intellectual property protection, efficiency of legal framework in settling disputes, strength of investor protection, and other factors exhibited a strong positive relationship with output gap in Egypt over the period (2010-2014).