In an increasingly digital global economy, cybersecurity capacity has become a key determinant of national resilience, economic competitiveness, and digital trust. However, preparedness remains uneven across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where levels of economic integration, governance quality, and institutional stability vary significantly. This paper examines the relationship between cybersecurity capacity, governance indicators, and international trade in selected MENA countries over the period 2010–2023. It evaluates whether rule of law and political stability are associated with cybersecurity capacity, whether trade openness predicts cybersecurity development, and whether cybersecurity capacity is dynamically associated with trade openness. The empirical analysis applies panel-data techniques, including panel unit-root tests, Pedroni cointegration tests, and the Toda–Yamamoto predictive causality framework within a multivariate VAR structure. Panel fixed-effects regressions with Driscoll–Kraay robust standard errors are also estimated to capture contemporaneous relationships while accounting for heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, cross-sectional dependence, and country-specific heterogeneity. The findings provide indicative evidence of a statistically significant bidirectional predictive relationship between trade openness and cybersecurity capacity. Greater trade integration appears to stimulate investment in secure digital infrastructure, while enhanced cybersecurity capacity may support trade expansion by strengthening digital trust and reducing transaction risks. In contrast, governance indicators do not exhibit consistent dynamic predictive relationships within the causality framework. The absence of cointegration indicates that cybersecurity capacity, governance indicators, and trade openness do not evolve within a stable long-run equilibrium relationship during the sample period. This finding may reflect the heterogeneous and policy-sensitive nature of digital infrastructure development across MENA countries.
Faisal et al. (Tue,) studied this question.