Do foreign direct investment and net national savings promote women’s access to economic opportunities in Burkina Faso? the moderating role of institutional quality

This study analyze the effects of foreign direct investment and net national savings on women's participation in economic opportunities in Burkina Faso over the period 1990–2024. It contributes to the literature by simultaneously examining the role of international capital and the mobilization of domestic financial resources in promoting women's economic participation. Methodologically, the study uses an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) linear model to estimate the effects of these variables. The results show that, in the long term, foreign direct investment has a positive, but statistically insignificant, effect on women's participation in economic opportunities, with an estimated coefficient of 0.482, while net national savings has a positive and statistically significant effect, with an estimated coefficient of 2.716. Furthermore, the interactions between foreign direct investment and institutional quality, on the one hand, and between net national savings and institutional quality, on the other, are positive and statistically significant, highlighting the crucial role of institutional quality in amplifying the effects of international and domestic capital. These results indicate that public policies should prioritize the mobilization of national savings, which has a significant effect on women's economic participation, direct foreign direct investment towards sectors that create jobs for women in order to increase its impact, and strengthen the quality of institutions to improve the efficiency of international and national capital.