Download or read book Challenges of Growth and Globalization in the Middle East and North Africa written by Mr.Hamid R Davoodi and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2003-09-05 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region. Despite undertaking economic reforms in many countries, and having considerable success in avoiding crises and achieving macroeconomic stability, the region’s economic performance in the past 30 years has been below potential. This paper takes stock of the region’s relatively weak performance, explores the reasons for this out come, and proposes an agenda for urgent reforms.

Download or read book Opening Doors written by The World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report analyzes key challenges for improving gender equality in the MENA region and provides policy priorities that Governments could consider to address these challenges. By and large the critical areas are in improving economic and political participation of females.

Download or read book The Upside of Digital for the Middle East and North Africa written by Ana Paula Cusolito and published by . This book was released on 2022-05-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital transformation can yield large socio-economic gains, in terms of increased growth in GDP, sector activity, and jobs. Widespread use of digital tools significantly reduces costs, rendering economic activity more productive.

Download or read book Infrastructure and Employment Creation in the Middle East and North Africa written by Antonio Estache and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infrastructure has a substantial role to play in creating new jobs in the Middle East and North Africa, but its potential varies greatly across countries and sectors and will not suffice to resolve the mounting unemployment problem in the region.

Download or read book Creating Employment in the Middle East and North Africa written by Mr.E. H. Gardner and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2003-09-05 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The population of the Middle East and North Africa is one of the fastest growing in the world, but jobs have not grown as fast as the region’s workforce. This paper addresses questions such as"Can current GDP growth generate more employment, or will higher GDP growth be required?"and "Will the current pattern of job creation-with much of the region’s workforce employed by the public sector-need to change?"

Download or read book Unlocking the Employment Potential in the Middle East and North Africa written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Economics of the Middle East and North Africa MENA written by Joseph Pelzman and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a large, complex, and diverse region, which faces a wide range of economic issues. The MENA group includes Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. This book uses analytical tools drawn from the trade, labor, finance, and development literature to critically analyze and compare these countries' economic policies. The approach taken in this book is to focus on the economic policies and institutional arrangements which have evolved in MENA and which may serve to explain the differences in each country's economic performance. The key objective of the book is to unravel the context-specific variety of growth-promoting policies within MENA rather than focus on specific countries. This book stresses that the poor performance of Arab MENA can be chiefly explained by their aversion to a Western paradigm of market economics. In the advanced industrial countries and in Israel, “globalization” is largely viewed in economic terms — the free movement of goods, services, labor and capital across borders. In the Arab MENA, however, “globalization” is viewed in largely ideological terms and has been regarded as a new version of imperialism. Consequently, the Arab MENA region remains one of the most un-globalized regions in the world. The book serves as both a textbook and a summary of the very large literature on MENA. It examines the following economic realities of the region and compares them across the MENA economies: Technology gap and comparative developmentThe value of education and human capital developmentWater and food securityThe economics and politics of oilPopulation growth, role of gender, and labor mobilityThe role of the state as economic actorThe economic value of democracyThe prospects for regional integration

Download or read book Women Work and Patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa written by Fariba Solati and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-20 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates why the rate of female labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa is the lowest in the world. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the book explains that the primary reason for the low rate of female labor force participation is the strong institutions of patriarchy in the region. Using multiple proxies for patriarchy, this book quantifies the multi-dimensional concept of patriarchy in order to measure it across sixty developing countries over thirty years. The findings show that Middle Eastern and North African countries have higher levels of patriarchy with regards to women’s participation in public spheres compared with the rest of the world. Although the rate of formal female labor force participation is low, women across the region contribute greatly to the financial wellbeing of their families and communities. By defining a woman’s place as in the home, patriarchy has made women’s economic activities invisible to official labor statistics since it has caused many women to work in the informal sector of the economy or work as unpaid workers, thus creating an illusion that women in the region are not economically active. While religion has often legitimized patriarchy, oil income has made it affordable for many countries in the region.

Download or read book Public Sector Reform in the Middle East and North Africa written by Robert P. Beschel and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.

Download or read book Women Work and Welfare in the Middle East and North Africa written by Nadereh Chamlou and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2015 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, and in light of socio-economic and geopolitical challenges facing governments old and new, women's rights and empowerment have gained new urgency and relevance. Groups in power, or groups contesting for power, are more conservative than expected, and there are serious threats to roll back some of the gains women had achieved over the past 20-30 years on economic and social fronts. The global gender debate has neglected the economic dimension of women's empowerment and a great deal of debate and interest among researchers is needed to push the topics further. This timely book brings together leading regional researchers to offer original research linking gender equality with economic policy, reinforcing the agenda from a broad-based perspective."--Publisher summary.

Download or read book Broadband Networks in the Middle East and North Africa written by Natalija Gelvanovska and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The existing telecommunications infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa MENA suffers from various regulatory and market bottlenecks that are hampering the growth of the Internet in most countries and related access to information and to potential new job sources.

Download or read book Striving for Better Jobs written by Roberta Gatti and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While economic growth has been sustained for a number of years in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, this has not resulted in the creation of an adequate number of jobs and has succeeded, at best, in generating low-quality, informal jobs. While there is a great deal of heterogeneity across countries, informality in MENA is widespread, and some countries in the region are amongst the most informal economies in the world. The book looks at informality through a human development angle and focuses specifically on informal employment. In line with this approach, the working definition for informality adopted in the book is “lack of social security coverage” (usually understood as pensions, or if a pension system does not exist, as health insurance), which captures well the vulnerability associated with informal employment. Informal workers in MENA are generally engaged in low productivity jobs - more so than in comparator countries -, are paid less for otherwise similar work in the formal sector, and self-report low levels of satisfaction at work. Also, informal workers in MENA face important mobility barriers into formal employment and thus lack of social security coverage against health, unemployment, and old-age risks. Formal employment in the MENA region is strongly associated with public sector employment. Opportunities for formal employment in the private sector in the region remain very limited. The book identifies 5 strategic directions to promote long-term inclusive growth and formality, namely: (i) fostering competition; (ii) realigning incentives in the public sector; (iii) moving towards labor regulations that promote labor mobility and provide support to workers in periods of transition; (iv) enhancing the productivity of informal workers through training and skills upgrading; and (v) reforming existing social insurance systems and introduce new instruments for coverage extension. This book is addressed to policy makers, academics, and practitioners who wish to understand the phenomenon of informal employment, and policy options for promoting more inclusive and productive labor market opportunities.

Download or read book Coping with Uncertainty written by Jörg Gertel and published by Saqi Books. This book was released on 2018-08-13 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven years after the Arab uprisings, the social situation has deteriorated across the Middle East and North Africa. Political, economic and personal insecurities have expanded while income from oil declined and tourist revenues have collapsed due to political instability. Against a backdrop of escalating armed conflicts and disintegrating state structures, many have been forced from their homes, creating millions of internally displaced persons and refugees. Young people are often the ones hit hardest by the turmoil. How do they cope with these ongoing uncertainties, and what drives them to pursue their own dreams in spite of these hardships? In this landmark volume, an international interdisciplinary team of researchers assess a survey of 9,000 sixteen- to thirty-year-olds from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen, resulting in the most comprehensive, in-depth study of young people in the MENA region to date. Given how rapidly events have moved in the Middle East and North Africa, the findings are in many regards unexpected.

Download or read book Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor October 2018 written by Rabah Arezki and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "After a sharp fall in 2017, economic growth in MENA is projected to rebound to 3.1 percent in 2018, thanks to the positive global outlook, oil prices stabilizing at relatively higher levels, stabilization policies and reforms, and recovery and reconstruction as conflicts recede. The outlook for MENA remains positive, and the growth rebound is expected to gain momentum over the next two years, exceeding 3 percent in 2020. While stabilization policies have helped economies adjust in recent years, .a second phase of reforms is needed should be transformative if the region is to reach its potential and create jobs for hundred million young people who will enter the labor market in coming decades. In this report, we explore the role that public-private partnerships can play. not only in providing an alternative source of financing but in helping change the role of the state from the main provider of employment to an enabler of private sector activity. Studies have shown that the gap between MENA economies and fast-growing ones is the performance of the services sector. The disruptive technology offers new opportunities for boosting private-sector-led growth through enhancement of high-tech jobs in the services sector. The report argues that combining the region's fast-growing pool of university graduates and a heavy penetration of social media and smartphone, could serve as the foundation for a digital sector that could create much-needed private sector jobs for the youth over the next decade."

Download or read book Sustaining Gains in Poverty Reduction and Human Development in the Middle East and North Africa written by Farrukh Iqbal and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reviews the experience of the MENA region with poverty and human development since the mid-1980s. It finds that poverty rates did not decline by much during this period while health and education indicators improved substantially. The stagnation of poverty rates is ascribed to the stagnation of the region's economies during this period while the improvement in human indicators is likely due to several factors including improvement in the delivery of public health and education services.

Download or read book State Owned Enterprises in Middle East North Africa and Central Asia Size Costs and Challenges written by Mr. Ernesto Ramirez Rigo and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the COVID-19 shock, the key challenge facing policymakers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia region was how to generate strong, sustainable, job-rich, inclusive growth. Post-COVID-19, this challenge has only grown given the additional reduction in fiscal space due to the crisis and the increased need to support the recovery. The sizable state-owned enterprise (SOE) footprint in the region, together with its cost to the government, call for revisiting the SOE sector to help open fiscal space and look for growth opportunities.

Download or read book Challenges Of Economic Development In The Middle East And North Africa Region written by Julia C Devlin and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2010-01-20 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys major economic issues in the development of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region since World War II. It presents a framework of analysis highlighting underlying continuities in the region's approach to issues of growth, management of oil and natural resources, post-conflict environments, progress in trade liberalization and regional integration, the use of industrial policy, labor market adjustment and unemployment, educational attainment and poverty incidence. At the same time, this book focuses on emerging differences across countries in the region in the prevailing approach to addressing such challenges most notably between the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council and other MENA countries.This book also incorporates a discussion of tools and methods used by development practitioners and briefly examines issues of aid effectiveness. The approach used is intended to appeal to a wide audience including students of economic development, political scientists and development practitioners.