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This paper examines the four-way linkages between innovation, trade openness, financial development and economic growth using panel-VAR approach for 11 European countries over the period 2001-2016. Most importantly, the findings revealed that there is a unidirectional relationship between economic growth and financial development, between trade and economic growth and between innovation and financial development. The findings also revealed a negative relationship between innovation and economic growth and between trade and economic growth. The paper concludes that further regulation of financial systems and the quality of funding are important ingredients to foster economic development. The paper also concludes that country-specific characteristics can play an important role in fostering innovation and productivity. Furthermore, policymakers should improve institutional quality and improve the regulatory environment in order to benefit more from trade openness. Also, policy makers need to use innovation incentives for local companies in order to counteract the negative effects induced by market opening.

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Purpose Although a considerable bulk of literature has focused on the relationship between the implementation of quality assurance certification and the corporate performance of companies, still few are the works devoted to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this paper is to provide additional evidence for the impact of implementing quality assurance and control certificates on the performance of French SMEs. Design/methodology/approach With a view to determining the effect of certification on the performance of 1,164 French SMEs, the study used the matching method as developed by D.B. Rubin (1974). The data mobilized is the fruit of matching the results of the IOC survey (the Organizational Change and Informatization) conducted in 2006 with data pertaining to the performance of companies as derived from DIANE files (Disk for Economic Analysis). Findings The empirical contribution of this study indicates the need of SMEs for implementing quality certificates to improve their turnover, increase their added value, increase their labor productivity and boost the productivity of financial capital. Research limitations/implications The paper has three main limitations. The first has to do with the choice of performance indicators. The paper is manly limited to the economic side of corporate performance. The second limitation is related to the origin of the data that covers only the year 2006. The study suffers from the time interval limit in which the relation between the implementation of the organizational innovations and the performance is tested. The third limitation concerns the generalization of results. The study was conducted on French SMEs, which limits the generalization of the results obtained. Practical implications Research findings have many implications on researchers and SME executives. For this latter, quality assurance system is perceived as a tool to maintain a competitive edge over competitors. Originality/value The paper aims to assess the impact of implementing quality certificates on the performance of French SMEs. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the relationship between the implementation of a quality assurance certificate and the performance of a large sample of 1,164 French SMEs.

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In order to analyze the determinants of FDI, several empirical studies have been done by applying different econometric models. The purpose of this article is to identify the determinants of FDI in Tunisia through a gravity model. The results of the econometric estimation show that the main factors of attractiveness in Tunisia in the period between 1980 and 2013 are: the importance of the size of the host country market, trade openness, good infrastructure, geographic proximity, political stability and skilled human capital.

The primary aim of the present article is to study whether foreign direct investment (FDI) exerts positive or negative effects on the Moroccan economy. Thus, through a structural model of simultaneous equations, the effects of FDI were examined in terms of economic growth, foreign trade, human capital and domestic investment in Morocco. The empirical results of this study show that FDI clearly demonstrates significant and positive effects on the first three variables whereas, it appears that there is no significant correlation with the domestic investment variable.Contribution/ Originality: This study contributes to provide the effects of foreign direct investment on the Moroccan economy by estimating an econometric structural model of simultaneous equations.