Middle East Development Journal最新文献

Labor market transitions in Egypt post-Arab Spring 阿拉伯之春后埃及劳动力市场的转型

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Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2024-06-12 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2024.2360849

Jingyuan Deng, Nelly Elmallakh, Luca Flabbi, Roberta Gatti

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Are asset quality weaknesses holding back bank lending? Evidence from MENA region 资产质量缺陷是否阻碍了银行贷款？中东和北非地区的证据

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Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2024-06-07 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2024.2360848

Saibal Ghosh

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How sanctions work. Iran and the impact of economic warfare 制裁是如何发挥作用的？伊朗和经济战的影响

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Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2024-05-02 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2024.2340412

José Díaz-Bahamonde

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Do non-natives catch-up with the natives in terms of earnings in Jordan? New evidence from a distributional analysis 在约旦，非本地人的收入是否赶超本地人？来自分配分析的新证据

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Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2024-02-06 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2024.2310468

Hatem Jemmali, Rabeh Morrar

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Capital flight and the real exchange rate: evidence from resource scarce MENA countries 资本外逃与实际汇率:来自资源匮乏的中东和北非国家的证据

IF 0.5

Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2023-11-20 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2023.2282325

A. Yasemin Yalta, A. Talha Yalta

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School performance and child paid work: evidence from West Bank schools 学校表现和儿童有偿工作:来自西岸学校的证据

Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2023-10-31 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2023.2275485

Sameh Hallaq, Ayman Khalifah

{"title":"School performance and child paid work: evidence from West Bank schools","authors":"Sameh Hallaq, Ayman Khalifah","doi":"10.1080/17938120.2023.2275485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17938120.2023.2275485","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe current study aims to investigate the impact of academic achievement on child labor. The study utilizes survey data collected from Palestinian children in the primary grades (5th–9th) in West Bank schools. The results show that increasing a child’s academic achievement is significantly associated with decreasing the probability of a child’s paid work in the following period. Our findings varied among children according to their gender, age, and locality type. Our analyses are subject to different specifications, including two-stage least squares (2SLS) to account for potential endogeneity. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the opportunity cost of dropping out of school is low for students with poor school outcomes. Further analysis indicates the role of the family-supportive environment as a mediator between academic success and child labor-supply decisions.KEYWORDS: Academic achievement; child laborWest BankJEL CLASSIFICATIONS: D15I21J13I12 AcknowledgmentThe authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. The analysis presented in this paper is part of the project “Determinants of Cognitive Development in Deprived Environments: Evidence from the West Bank” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under grant number JU 2769/2.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 For more details see: https://www.unicef.org/protection/child-labour.2 Noting that some sources indicate more severe rates of child labor from UNICEF, see: https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/child-labor-facts-and-statisticsl.3 See ‘What is Child Labour’ section on ILO website at https://www.ilo.org/ipec/facts/lang--en/index.htm#.4 For further details, see https://data.unicef.org/sdgs/goal-8-decent-work-economic-growth/#:~:text=As%20this%20relates%20to%20children,of%20child%20labour%20by%202025.5 UNRWA stands for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. These schools are designed for Palestinian refugee children and provide free education until 9th grade.6 This percentage (94.6%) represents Net Enrollment Rate in Basic Education in the West Bank School, which is defined as the total number of students in official enrollment age (6–15 years) regardless of the grade they are enrolled in, expressed as a percentage of the total number of populations with corresponding age group (6–15 years). This percentage slightly varies among males and females’ students, 94.1% vs 96.4%, respectively (PCBS, Citation2017).7 According to PCBS (Citation2013), the drop rate in the West Bank primary stage schools during the academic year 2010/2011 was 0.5% for females and 1.2% for males’ students.8 See amendments to the law in http://muqtafi.birzeit.edu/pg/getleg.asp?id=16500.9 For more details see: https://www.ilo.org/beirut/media-centre/news/WCMS_510750/lang--en/index.htm.10 For example, Palestinians in East Jerusalem have better access to ","PeriodicalId":43862,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Development Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135928322","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Oil dependency and happiness in net oil-exporting countries: is it a curse or blessing? 石油净出口国的石油依赖与幸福:是祸还是福?

Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2023-10-31 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2023.2275484

Ly Slesman

{"title":"Oil dependency and happiness in net oil-exporting countries: is it a curse or blessing?","authors":"Ly Slesman","doi":"10.1080/17938120.2023.2275484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17938120.2023.2275484","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe resource curse hypothesis postulates that countries endowed with and dependent on abundant natural resources tend to underperform in socioeconomic and development outcomes than those with fewer natural resources. Recently, a few studies argued that this curse also manifests in lower life satisfaction or happiness. Focusing on 31 net oil-exporting countries over the 2006–2019 period, we find no evidence that oil rents (and aggregate and disaggregate resource rents) have an adverse effect on happiness or subjective well-being. This contrasts with recent studies using a global sample. We further contribute to this debate by examining the channels of resource curse or blessing along with income, unemployment, inflation, levels of human development, and governance. We show that oil rent enhances the positive marginal effects of income on happiness. We find no evidence of this conditional effect through other channels. Being rich in oil or natural resources is not necessarily a curse on happiness, but, if any, it is a blessing through income-generating well-being.KEYWORDS: Resource blessingresource cursehappinesslife satisfactionsubjective well-beingnet oil-exporting countriesJEL CLASSIFICATION: Q34I31C33 AcknowledgementEarlier version of this paper was presented at the 24th Malaysian Finance Association International Conference 2022.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 We use ‘subjective life satisfaction’, ‘subjective well-being’, ‘well-being’, and ‘happiness’ interchangeably (Veenhoven, Citation2012; Helliwell et al., Citation2013).2 Ayelazuno (Citation2014) provided a critical analysis of the case of Ghana. He argued that despite having met many conditions (e.g. good quality of governance of oil wealth, and the political institutions) prescribed by the ‘orthodox oil curse’ approach to turn oil into a blessing, the oil rents have not trickled down to the average local people in Ghana as oil multinational corporations have created the enclaved resource sector that is detached from the rest of the economy and hence there is no real spillovers and job creation.3 Oil rents (as a share of GDP), a measure of oil dependency – estimated based on production cost, price, and quantities of oil – capture more closely the economic rents accrued from oil that is usually used to support the oil-rich countries’ current consumption and investment, for example, expenditures on welfare supports and programs, and welfare-enhancing investments.4 Toews (Citation2015) modeled the links between resource boom (oil price), aspiration, and satisfaction with income. In the model, increasing oil prices would also increase people's expectations about future income (and aspirations). The model predicts that if actual realized income does not live up to this expectation (i.e. it is smaller than the expected future income) people's satisfaction would be reduced.5 This finding implies that exclusive focus on net oil-e","PeriodicalId":43862,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Development Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135928472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Institutional quality and inward FDI: empirical evidence from GCC economies 体制质量与外国直接投资:来自海湾合作委员会经济体的经验证据

Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2023-10-10 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2023.2254188

Andrzej Cieślik, Sarhad Hamza

{"title":"Institutional quality and inward FDI: empirical evidence from GCC economies","authors":"Andrzej Cieślik, Sarhad Hamza","doi":"10.1080/17938120.2023.2254188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17938120.2023.2254188","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThis paper studies the determinants of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) across the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries between 2009 and 2017 using a modified knowledge-capital model of the multinational firm. In particular, we investigate the importance of institutional quality factors. We document the significant effects of institutional characteristics such as government effectiveness, control of corruption, political stability and rule of law, while regulatory quality was found to be less important. Moreover, our study finds that the GCC countries’ FDI can be explained by horizontal market seeking rather than efficiency-seeking vertical motives. Finally, the extended specification results highlight the significant effects of colonial relationships, common language and contiguity.KEYWORDS: Foreign direct investmentGCC regioninstitutional qualitypseudo-poisson maximum likelihoodknowledge capital modelJEL CLASSIFICATION: F23 AcknowledgmentThe authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. We are also gratefully acknowledging Oleg Gurshev in the Department of Economic Sciences at the University of Warsaw for reading and commenting on the previous drafts of the paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 They argue that the GCC region features a lower institutional quality relative to the other regions around the world and suffers from flawed institutions at numerous levels, including the malfunctioning of public administration, shortages in political rights, and ineffective laws and regulations.2 These reforms incorporated incentives such as tax waivers, relaxed restrictions on foreign ownership, and removal of trade barriers.3 The GCC countries have signed over 200 BITs, where Kuwait is the leader followed by the UAE and Qatar.4 The examples include Méon and Sekkat (Citation2004), Mina (Citation2007), Aziz and Mishra (Citation2016), and Aziz (Citation2018).5 Their seminal models have been extended by, inter alia, Horstmann and Markusen (Citation1987), Markusen & Venables (Citation1998; Citation2000), Helpman et al. (Citation2004), Cieślik and Ryan (Citation2012).6 In the horizontal type of FDI, firms face the trade-off between maximizing proximity to households and concentrating production to achieve economies of scale. In contrast, the vertical type of FDI is related to countries’ differences in relative factor endowments. Thus, the decision of firms to engage in horizontal FDI would be driven by the size and growth of the host country, whereas vertical FDI seeks cost competitiveness and other factors such as quality of domestic institutions, political risk, and physical infrastructure.7 The GCC countries include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).8 Our bilateral data covers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates due to nearly all of the GCC countries do not report outward FD","PeriodicalId":43862,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Development Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136296356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

An empirical investigation of COVID-19 impact on the finance and human resources of logistics and supply chain companies in Oman 新冠肺炎疫情对阿曼物流供应链企业财务和人力资源影响的实证研究

Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2023-09-12 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2023.2254187

Ashraf Mishrif, Asharul Khan

{"title":"An empirical investigation of COVID-19 impact on the finance and human resources of logistics and supply chain companies in Oman","authors":"Ashraf Mishrif, Asharul Khan","doi":"10.1080/17938120.2023.2254187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17938120.2023.2254187","url":null,"abstract":"The impact of COVID-19 has badly affected most companies across the economy, with many of them claiming losses in revenue and human resources. As such claimed losses are hard to quantify, we aim to understand the nature and scale of the shortfalls in the company’s revenues and the factors affecting changes in revenues, including demand of company’s services and change in the operational capacity. The impact of shortfalls is also examined on human resources in terms of employee’s layoffs, wages, and new recruitment during the time of COVID-19, specifically the period 2020–2021. The quantitative analysis is based on a survey questionnaire of 61 logistics and supply chain companies randomly selected from the industrial cities and free economic zones in the Sultanate of Oman. Data analysis reveals that the pandemic reduced the demand for services and lowered revenues, subsequently affecting wages and employees’ layoffs. The lack of imported spare parts and raw materials affected the firm’s operational capacity. The surveyed companies suffered from empty shipping containers and heavy traffic at various ports. While providing a more realistic and quantifiable account of the economic impact of the pandemic on firms operating in Oman, our findings have practical implications for policymakers and executives to develop a rapid response system to minimize the financial and human resources costs at the time of crises.","PeriodicalId":43862,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Development Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135826133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

COVID-19 shock 2020: impact on foreign and Kuwaiti workers and contrasts with employment, earnings and consumption during normal times 2020年2019冠状病毒病冲击:对外国和科威特工人的影响以及与正常时期就业、收入和消费的对比

IF 0.5

Middle East Development Journal Pub Date : 2023-09-06 DOI: 10.1080/17938120.2023.2254186

Ahmad Alawadhi, Mohammad Alali, Shaikha Al-Fulaij, Weam Behbahani, Marwa Al-Musallam, S. Al-qudsi

{"title":"COVID-19 shock 2020: impact on foreign and Kuwaiti workers and contrasts with employment, earnings and consumption during normal times","authors":"Ahmad Alawadhi, Mohammad Alali, Shaikha Al-Fulaij, Weam Behbahani, Marwa Al-Musallam, S. Al-qudsi","doi":"10.1080/17938120.2023.2254186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17938120.2023.2254186","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper uses micro-level data from the 2013 official Kuwait Household expenditure survey covering 2961 households; and three 2020 COVID-19 shock-related CEO, labor force and household surveys to juxtapose the consumption profiles of foreign workers in Kuwait. The paper contributes to a growing literature on foreign workers by focusing on foreign workers’ employment and earnings and consumption profiles following the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper compares differential consumption responses of 250 foreign and Kuwaiti households during the COVID-19 shock with profiles that existed during 2013, which was a shock-free year. Moreover, since foreigners represent nearly 70% of the population, OLS regressions were applied to the 2013 microdata and the 2020 household survey to inquire if standard consumption functions deployed in the economic literature hold in the case of foreign households in Kuwait and vets how their consumption responded to income shocks. Our data and empirical analysis corroborate that Kuwait’s foreign community bore the brunt of COVID-19 in terms of employment, earnings and living conditions. Moreover, our results broadly indicate congruence with Friedman’s permanent income hypothesis, and that for given income levels, consumption heterogeneity holds for foreign workers according to age cohorts, giving support to the life cycle hypothesis. The findings carry significant implications to Kuwait’s dichotomous labor markets, and to households’ income and consumption policies especially to Kuwait’s transformative policy to realize sustainable growth.","PeriodicalId":43862,"journal":{"name":"Middle East Development Journal","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47714194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0