After independence, the GCC countries relied heavily on foreign workers from fellow Arab countries. Thus, remittances flowed from GCC to other countries in MENA. In the 1980s-1990s labor source switched to South Asia; so did the flow of remittances. This paper examines the consequences of the...

Despite being a fixture of everyday life in the Arab world, wasta, which may be thought of as special influence by members of the same group or tribe, has received little attention from social scientists. Our casual empiricism suggests that wasta is an important determinant of how economic...

This paper examines the legal and policy implications of information asymmetry on foreign domestic workers employed under the Kafala sponsorship system in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Drawing from ethnographic and field-based observations in large GCC migrant destinations -...

This paper investigates the impact of openness to trade and higher levels of human capital on the economies of some MENA countries. To answer the question: whether either human capital or openness can be shown to cause productivity, we use panel data on 16 countries spanning the 1965-2000...

This paper examines the determinants of private tutoring in five major Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. The paper uses data extracted from the SAHWA Youth Survey (2016) and runs a probit model. The main findings indicate that age,...

Youth empowerment, i.e., the ability of young people to take control over key aspects of their lives, has become a growing concern to achieving sustainable development worldwide. An increasing number of policy interventions is targeting the youth, but to monitor the progress a better...

This paper identifies gaps in availability, access, and quality of household budget surveys in the Middle East and North Africa region used to measure monetary poverty and evaluates ways to fill these information gaps. Despite improving public access to household budget surveys, the availability...

The worldwide obesity epidemic has impacted women more heavily than men. These gender-based differences are particularly pronounced in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region where gender obesity gaps on average exceed 10 percentage points. This paper examines one of the explanations,...

Using a unique pairing of household survey data and geolocational conflict data, we investigate the relationship between local conflict intensity and the disciplinary methods employed by Iraqi households. We find that parents in high-conflict areas are more likely to use both moderate and severe...

This study explores the relationship between armed conflict and breastfeeding practices of Iraqi mothers. Using a unique pairing of the Iraq Body Count database, in conjunction with the 2006 and 2011 Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys for Iraq, we find that increases in conflict-related...