Following a period of rapid growth in the late 19th century, Egyptian real per capita income stagnated in the first half of the 20th century. This widely accepted belief is based on trends in agricultural productivity but a fragmented body of evidence on aggregate output. In particular, no...

Recent academic and policy discussions have emphasized the poor growth performance of MENA's economies since the mid 1980s. It has been argued that the expanding global economy presents MENA with the opportunity to augment its limited pool of national savings with private capital inflows....

Despite recent gains, the development challenges of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remain formidable. Job creation remains the most important one given the magnitude of its demographic transition and the seventy million people that are expected to seek employment opportunities in...

This paper studies the impact of the financial and economic liberalization in Tunisia since the mid-1980s on the financial structure and behavior of the corporate sector. We analyze the effect of financing constraints, due to market imperfections as well as credit allocation policies, on the...

The paper presents an institutional economic analysis of State-Owned-Enterprise reform where the large size of the public sector, which is a major characteristic of most MENA countries, plays a central role in the overall reform process. It is suggested that a major determinant of the power and...