Competition policy plays an increasing role worldwide, both at the national and international level. The number of countries with competition laws has increased to about seventy as of 1999, against less than thirty only three decades earlier. One of the many reasons that lie behind this renewed...

Starting from the observation that intra-regional trade flows in the Mashreq are abnormally low, the paper reviews the existing trade agreements and the alternative options that the countries of the region could embrace in order to deepen their trade relations. This discussion is set against the...

Developing countries have a considerable stake in supporting a comprehensive new round of multilateral trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to achieve further trade liberalization and benefit from intersectorial trade-off.For their constructuve particiaption in...

A review of recent studies that attempt to estimate the potential gain from the Arab region integration in the World economy indicates initial losses of significant gains. The paper reviews development in the Arab region, examines relevant recent experience from SE Asia, and attempts to outline...

The paper aims to identify the interests and concerns of MENA countries in the new round of multilateral trade negotiations (the WTO 2000 negotiations) with a view of helping these countries develop negotiation objectives and strategies.

The paper reviews the status of MENA agriculture trade and policies in relation with the Uraguay Round Agreement on Agricultural and future WTO negotiations.

This paper empirically assesses the impact of exchange rate policy on the performance of manufactured exports for four North African countries over the 1970-92 period. The impact of exchange rate policy is examined through the effect of three indicators: real effective exchange rate (RER)...

Do countries with lower policy-induced barriers to international trade grow faster, once other relevant country characteristics are controlled for? There exists a large empirical literature providing an affirmative answer to this question. We argue that methodological problems with the empirical...

This paper looks at the implications of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership agreement on labor and wages in Egypt, using a dynamic CGE model, which takes into account the labor market segmentation. Our results suggest that trade liberalization bears the risk of promoting the use of...

The role of education, technological diffusion and trade is investigated for 11 MENA countries for 1980-1992, using panel data techniques. Technological diffusion is measured by R&D activities in each country?s major trading partners and that country?s import propensity from each partner....