Employment Policy & Technology Choice in Manufacturing in the GCC: The Case of Bahrain

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the employment policy and technology choice of joint ventures and local establishments in manufacturing in Bahrain. In the first part of the paper, the employment structure and its trends in Bahrain are discussed. In the remaining part, discriminate analysis is used to test the impact of employment policy and technology choice on the performance of joint ventures and local establishments in a multivariate context. The statistical findings suggest that foreign participation in the manufacturing sector through joint ventures has a greater role than local establishments in introducing skill and capital intensive production processes, in attracting higher Bahraini employees, paying higher wages, and developing and exploiting the economy's comparative advantage within the context of an export-oriented policy. Arabic Abstract: