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Making aid-for-trade more effective in the MENA region

• Nora Aboushady ,
• Georges Harb and
• Chahir Zaki

Aid-for-trade represents an important opportunity for developing countries to enhance their trade capacities. But the positive effect of aid-for-trade on ...

Conflict and debt in the Middle East and North Africa

• Roberta V. Gatti ,
• Federico Bennett ,
• Gianluca Mele ,
• Hoda Assem and

With the global economy is in its third year of deceleration amid declining inflation and oil prices, the Middle East ...

Reformed foreign ownership rules in UAE: the impact on business entry

• Ahmed Rashad

In an effort to stimulate economic growth and diversify the economy, the government of the United Arab Emirates has recently ...

Arab regional cooperation in a fragmenting world

• Hafez Ghanem

As globalisation stalls, regionalisation has emerged as an alternative. This column argues that Arab countries need to face the new ...

Self-employment in MENA: the role of religiosity and personal values

• Charbel Bassil ,
• Arsalan Safari and
• Mahour Parast

How important are individual’s values and beliefs in influencing the likelihood that they will embrace the responsibilities, risks and entrepreneurial ...

Gender differences in business record-keeping and planning in Iraq

• Hassan F. Gholipour ,
• John W. Goodell ,
• Iman Cheratian ,
• Saleh Goltabar and
• Oumaima Lahmar

Only one in every ten informal businesses in Iraq is led by a woman. Yet as research summarised in this ...

It’s too early to tell what happened to the Arab Spring

• Noha El-Mikawy

Did the Arab Spring fail? This column presents a view the consensus view from ERF’s recent annual conference in Morocco: ...

Happiness in the Arab world: should we be concerned?

• Paul Makdissi

Several Arab countries have low rankings in the latest comparative assessment of average happiness across the world. But as this ...

Several Arab countries have low rankings in the latest comparative assessment of average happiness across the world. But as this column explains, the average is not a reliable summary statistic when applied to ordinal data. The evidence from more robust analysis of socio-economic inequality in happiness suggests that policy-makers should be less concerned about happiness indicators than the core development objective of more equitable social conditions for citizens.

The economics of Israeli war aims and strategies

Israel’s response to last October’s Hamas attack has led to widespread death and destruction. This column outlines the impact thus far, including the effects on food scarcity, migration and the Palestinian economy in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Did the Arab Spring fail? This column presents a view the consensus view from ERF’s recent annual conference in Morocco: careful analysis of the fundamental drivers of democratic transitions suggests that it’s too early to tell.

As globalisation stalls, regionalisation has emerged as an alternative. This column argues that Arab countries need to face the new realities and move decisively towards greater mutual cooperation. A regional integration agenda that also supports domestic reforms could be an important source of growth, jobs and stability.

How important are individual’s values and beliefs in influencing the likelihood that they will embrace the responsibilities, risks and entrepreneurial challenge of self-employment? This column presents evidence from 12 countries in the Middle East and North African region on the roles of people’s religiosity and sense of personal agency in their labour market choices.

Only one in every ten informal businesses in Iraq is led by a woman. Yet as research summarised in this column reveals, those businesses are more likely to set budgets and sales targets, and to keep business records. This may be evidence of the role of social exclusion in motivating greater reliance on the formal bureaucratic system.

In an effort to stimulate economic growth and diversify the economy, the government of the United Arab Emirates has recently implemented regulatory reform that allows 100% foreign ownership of companies operating in the country. This column examines the implications of the reform for entry of new firms in Dubai, using unique data on new business licences in the emirate.

With the global economy is in its third year of deceleration amid declining inflation and oil prices, the Middle East and North Africa grew by just 1.9% in 2023, with a forecast for growth in 2024 at 2.7%. In addition to heightened uncertainty brought on by the conflict centred in Gaza, many countries in the region are also grappling with pre-existing vulnerabilities, including rising debt levels. This column summarises a new report that unpacks the nature of debt in MENA – and explains the critical importance of keeping rising debt stocks in check.

Aid-for-trade represents an important opportunity for developing countries to enhance their trade capacities. But the positive effect of aid-for-trade on exports can hinge on the quality of institutions in recipient countries. According to research reported in this column, in the Middle East and North Africa, it is specific aid types – such as aid to support trade policy reform and aid to enhance productive capacities – that matter most for exports.

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Reduced Medicaid Access, Increased Crime

In 1993, Tennessee launched TennCare, a program that expanded traditional Medicaid coverage to include low-income adults who were childless and not disabled or elderly. The program offered low-cost preventative and diagnostic services, prescriptions, and, importantly, behavioral and alcohol and drug use rehabilitation services. By late 2004, TennCare covered a quarter of the state’s residents, and its adult Medicaid participation rate was the highest in the nation. The program consumed 30 percent of the state budget, and it was deemed unsustainable and discontinued in 2005. Over the remainder of that year, 10 percent of the state’s Medicaid enrollees — 3 percent of the state’s population — were cut from the rolls.

In Losing Medicaid and Crime (NBER Working Paper 32227), Monica Deza , Thanh Lu , Johanna Catherine Maclean , and Alberto Ortega study the consequences of this policy change for criminal activity. They note...

From the NBER Bulletin on Health

Early-Life Lead Exposure and Old-Age Longevity

In the early decades of the twentieth century, many American cities installed municipal water systems. A wide range of materials were used for pipes, but lead was a common choice due to its durability, ease of installation, and relatively low incidence of leaks. In Toxified to the Bone: Early-Life and Childhood Exposure to Lead and Men’s Old-Age Mortality (NBER Working Paper 31957), Jason Fletcher and Hamid Noghanibehambari show that the use of lead pipes in these systems had detrimental effects on long-term health among residents of affected cities. 

From the NBER Reporter: Research, program, and conference summaries

Unemployment in Informal Labor Markets in Developing Countries

Developing countries typically exhibit low rates of rural wage employment. For example, in India, male workers whose primary source of earnings is wage labor report working on only 46 percent of days per year. Bangladesh has a similarly low 55 percent rate of employment among landless males, and the rates are even lower in sub-Saharan Africa.

From the NBER Bulletin on Entrepreneurship

Immigration Policy and Entrepreneurs’ Choice of Startup Location

Immigrants play a significant role in the entrepreneurial landscape. In the United States, immigrants are 80 percent more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans. More than half of America's billion-dollar startup companies trace their roots to immigrant founders. There is limited research, however, on the factors that influence immigrants' decisions about where to locate their startup businesses. 

From the NBER Bulletin on Retirement and Disability

Social Security and Retirement around the World

Over the past 25 years, labor force participation at older ages has increased dramatically. In the 12 countries that are part of the NBER’s International Social Security (ISS) project, participation among those aged 60 to 64 has risen by an average of over 20 percentage points for men and over 25 percentage points for women.

Featured Working Papers

Black workers in routine, nonanalytic occupations have been less likely than Whites to move up to nonroutine, analytic work in both historical and modern periods,  Rowena Gray ,  Siobhan M. O'Keefe ,  Sarah Quincy ,  Zachary Ward . This suggests that task-displacement shocks, such as automating routine-manual work, widen Black-White earnings inequality.

Data from large sample of countries at varying levels of development suggest that extreme heat shocks to domestic agricultural production lead governments to increase assistance to consumers, often through border policies, while shocks to foreign production lead to increased assistance to producers,  Allan Hsiao ,  Jacob Moscona , and  Karthik Sastry find. 

Using the 2019 riots in Chile as a quasi-natural experiment that affected consumer demand, S. Borağan Aruoba ,  Andrés Fernández ,  Daniel Guzmán ,  Ernesto Pastén , and  Felipe Saffie show that supermarket pricing is consistent with a “menu cost” model in which sellers consider both current and future market conditions when setting prices. 

Automation can account for more than half of the increase in between-group inequality in the United States since 1980, and automation-driven rent dissipation offset more than 60 percent of the productivity gains from automation in that time, a study by  Daron Acemoglu and  Pascual Restrepo finds.

The size of an institution’s corporate bond holdings influences how actively it monitors its equity positions and contributes to its incentive to be an engaged investor,  Todd A. Gormley and  Manish Jha find.

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Publications

Policy brief - aid for trade and exports in the mena region:.

12 Jun 2024

202 - ERF W 4 P s - Determinants of Persistently High Fertility in Sudan

31 May 2024

202 - ERF W 4 P s - Education in Sudan: Disparities in Enrollment,

202 - erf w 4 p s - the lives and livelihoods.

30 May 2024

PRR 47 | May 2024 ERF Policy Research Report - Potential Employment

25 May 2024

ABOUT ERF - Connecting People and Ideas 2024

13 Apr 2024

4202 منتدى البحوث االقتصادية - نبذة عن

Policy brief - toward frontier macroeconomic institutions in support of....

31 Mar 2024

Economic Research Forum 2023 30

27 Mar 2024

25 Feb 2024

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