The impact of fish production on marine trade balance and foreign direct investment: An empirical study of the GCC economies

This study aims to identify the impact of fish output on the marine fish trade balance, as well as foreign investment opportunities in six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the period of 1985–2016. We applied several panel estimation techniques, including fixed effects (FE), generalized method of moments (GMM), instrumental variable-fixed effect (IV-FE), and panel ARDL.FE model estimates show that marine fish production has a positive and significant effect on the marine trade balance, with a 1% increase in fish production leading to a more than 1%increase in the trade balance. Estimates of system GMM and IV-FE methods, which allow for the controlling of endogeneity, suggest an even larger effect. When we consider the relationship with foreign direct investment (FDI), FE, GMM and IV-FE show no significant effects. However, the ARDL model shows a statistically significant long-term relationship between fish production and both trade balance and inward foreign direct investment.