Exploiting a unique policy reform in Egypt that reduced the number of years of compulsory schooling, we show how it unexpectedly increased education attainment as more students chose to complete the next school stage. This impact is almost entirely driven by girls from more disadvantaged...

Egyptian youth played a central role in the Arab Spring (AS) uprisings, yearning for changes in the political system and for better economic conditions. This paper investigates the perceptions of young Egyptians about the AS. The empirical analysis uses a bivariate ordered probit model to...

Women in the MENA region are economically and socially disempowered. High youth unemployment rates together with discriminatory social norms drive them to limit their investment in human capital. We evaluate a large-scale intervention attempting to relax human capital constraints for women by...

This paper examines the relationship between consanguinity and frequency of communication between spouses using a nationally representative sample of young married respondents in Egypt. Using a variety of estimation techniques, the results suggest that being related to one's spouse does not...

Egyptian women have played an unprecedented role in the Arab Spring democratic movement, possibly changing women's perception about their own rights and role. We question whether these events have translated into better outcomes within Egyptian households. We conjecture that potential changes...

This paper examines the economic ramifications of the recent political reconfigurations that the MENA region witnessed, commonly known as the Arab Spring, utilizing MENA countries data during period 2005-2016. Using the Arellano-Bond dynamic panel estimation, the paper estimates a growth model...

This paper considers the private sector wage earners in Egypt and examine their wage distribution during 1998-2012 using Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey. We first estimate Mincer wage equations both at the mean and at different quantiles of the wage distribution taking into account observable...

It is widely accepted that the costs of under-pricing energy are large, whether in advanced or developing countries. This paper explores how large these costs can be by focussing on the size of the external effects that energy subsidies in particular generate in two important sectors –...

Youth in Egypt hold rising aspirations for their adult lives, yet face an increasingly uncertain and protracted transition from school to work and thus into adulthood. This paper investigates how labor market insertion has been evolving over time in Egypt and how the nature of youth transitions...

This paper considers the public and private sector wage earners in Egypt and examines their wage distribution during 1998-2012 using Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey. We estimate the public-private sector wage gap with Mincer wage equations both at the mean and at different quantiles of the...