The Middle East and North Africa is the most water scarce region in the world. Although studies have explored the effect of extreme weather events on agriculture, much less is known about the effect on businesses. Using geocoded firm-level data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys across the...

The paper compares the distribution of energy and food subsidies across households and the impact of subsidy reforms on household welfare in the Middle East and North Africa region. The analysis uses a unified model and harmonized household data. The results show that the distribution of...

The paper takes stock of eight country studies and a cross-country analysis to review the experience with subsidy reforms in the Middle East and North Africa region between 2010 and 2014. This unprecedented period of subsidy reforms occurred during a period of extraordinary political changes,...

In times of highly volatile commodity markets, governments often try to protect their populations from rapidly-rising food prices, which can be particularly harsh for the poor. A potential solution for food-deficit countries is to hold strategic reserves, which can be called on when...

This paper reviews the experience of the Middle East and North Africa region in education attainment over the past four decades (1970-2010). It documents the following main findings: (a) all countries in the region experienced significant improvements in educational attainment over this period;...

Although child mortality rates have declined all across the developing world over the past 40 years, they have declined the most in the Middle East and North Africa region. This paper documents this remarkable experience and shows that it is broad based in the sense that all countries in the...

This paper uses a panel of annual observations for 198 banks in 19 Middle East and North Africa countries over 2001-12 to develop an early warning system for forecasting bank insolvency based on a multivariate logistic regression framework. The results show that the traditional CAMEL indicators...

In the Middle East and North Africa, food security and water security are tightly entwined. In particular, choices about the extent to which food security policies rely on trade rather than domestically produced staples have stark consequences for the region's limited water resources. This paper...

The Middle East and North Africa region is known for having low female labor market participation rates as compared with its level of economic development. A possible explanation is that these countries find themselves at the turning point of the U-shape hypothesis when countries transition from...

The Middle East and North Africa faces significant climate challenges, such as increasing temperatures, heightened flood risks, frequent droughts, and growing air pollution issues. These challenges are compounded by the large proportion of the population living below the poverty line in some...