Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) economies have had the highest degree of dependency on received remittances worldwide over the last three decades. The region has also had the highest non-oil external trade balance deficit among developing countries. We examine the role of remittances in...

Anglo-Saxon countries have been successful in the 1990s concerning labor market performance compared to the former role models Germany and Japan. This reversal in relative economic performance might be related to idiosyncracies in financial markets with bank-based financial markets as in Germany...

This article investigates the effect of natural resources on whether ethno-political groups choose to pursue their goals with non-violent as compared to violent means, distinguishing terrorism from insurgencies. It is hypothesized that whether or not the extraction of fossil fuels sparks...

This paper examines the relationship between financial development, CO2 emissions, trade and economic growth using simultaneous-equation panel data models for a panel of 12 MENA countries over the period 1990 - 2011. Our results indicate that there is evidence of bidirectional causality between...

This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on...

High income growth in many countries in East Asia and the Middle East has been accompanied by increasing income inequality and widening gaps between rich and poor, and urban and rural. It is therefore it is important to examine the interrelationships between inequality and economic growth. This...

Recent theories of the Long Divergence between Middle Eastern and Western European economies focus on Middle Eastern (over-)reliance on religious legitimacy, use of slave soldiers, and persistence of restrictive proscriptions of religious (Islamic) law. These theories take as exogenous the...

Labor market performance has differed considerably between OECD countries over the last two decades. The focus of the literature so far has been to ask whether these differences can be explained by varying degrees of labor market rigidities and generosity of welfare states. This paper takes a...

During the latter part of the 1990s the introduction of the euro, the dramatic increase in the supply of venture capital in most EU countries, and the creation of several new equity markets targeted at innovative firms have dramatically transformed the financing prospects of European...

This paper examines the impact of the global financial crisis on the banking sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, as well as the main determinants of the profitability of both domestic and foreign banks. The empirical findings suggest that during the crisis the former...