Despite sustained output growth since 1997, low-income Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries (CIS-7) have not experienced growth in employment, a phenomenon observed elsewhere in transitional economies and labeled as "jobless growth." The author addresses the causes of this...

The measurement of multidimensional poverty has been advocated by most welfare scholars and is experiencing a growth in interest, partly explained by controversial debates that have emerged across academics and practitioners. This paper follows one of the least explored approaches -- Multiple...

One of the recurrent explanations of the Arab spring is that governments were disconnected from their populations and that public policies were simply not in line with people's sentiments and expectations. This paper provides a methodology to better understand how objective conditions of...

The paper shows how Labor Force Surveys can be used effectively to estimate poverty rates using Household Expenditure Surveys and cross-survey imputation methods. With only two rounds of Household Expenditure Survey data for Morocco (2001 and 2007), the paper estimates quarterly poverty rates...

By all accounts, income inequality in Egypt is low and had been declining during the decade that preceded the 2011 revolution. As the Egyptian revolution was partly motivated by claims of social injustice and inequalities, this seems at odds with a low level of income inequality. Moreover, while...

The paper provides a review of the empirical literature in economics that has attempted to test the relative income hypothesis as put forward by Duesemberry (1949) and the relative deprivation hypothesis as formalized by Runciman (1966). It is argued that these two hypotheses and the empirical...

The paper develops a concept and a measure of the monetary capacity of a country to reduce its own poverty and shows how these tools can be used to guide budget allocations or the allocation of aid. The authors call this concept the income lever. Making use of tax and distributive theory, the...

Under increasing budget pressure, Morocco carried out an extensive set of subsidy reforms in 2014 and is planning for further reforms for 2015–2017, which will eliminate most consumers' subsidies. This paper evaluates (ex post) the 2014 reforms and simulates (ex ante) the impact on household...

Female labor participation in the Arab world is low compared with the level of economic development of Arab countries. Beyond anecdotal evidence and cross-country studies, there is little evidence on what could explain this phenomenon. This paper uses the richest set of panel data available for...

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...