This paper examines the interrelationships between energy consumption, foreign direct investment and economic growth using dynamic panel data models in simultaneous-equations for a global panel consisting of 65 countries. The time component of our dataset is 1990-2011 inclusive. To make the panel data analysis more homogenous, we also investigate this interrelationship for a number of sub-panels which are constructed based on the income level of countries. In this way, we end up with three income panels; namely, high income, middle income, and low income panels. In the empirical part, we draw on growth theory and augment the classical growth model, which consists of capital stock, labor force and inflation, with foreign direct investment and energy. Generally, we shows mixed results about the interrelationship between energy consumption, FDI and economic growth.

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Since the early 1990s, the world has seen a proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs). A major goal of free trade is to develop trade between its signatories. The gravity model is used to analyze the bilateral trade data against the variables of the relative size of the pair of countries involved in trade, distance, common border and language and dummies for each of the FTAs. This article focuses on the studying of the influence of the FTAs in the Mediterranean countries in which we integrate the role of the regional dummy EU-15, Economic and Monetary Union (eurozone), the Arab Maghreb Union and AGADIR Agreement (FTA between Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco) in trade flows. In addition, this work aims to detect the impact of the global financial crisis on export flows between the FTAs in the Mediterranean region. The use of regional variables in gravity models designed to determine whether the FTAs contribute to the creation or trade diversion. This study examines a cross section and panel (static and dynamic) of 27 countries for 1980-2011. The results show the existence of a strong relationship between the factors of FTAs and trade flows.

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