The authors examine the impact of public infrastructure on private capital formation in three countries of the Middle East and North Africa-Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. They highlight various channels through which public infrastructure may affect private investment. Then they describe their...

This paper studies the impact of labor market policies on growth and unemployment in labor-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The analysis is based on a framework that captures many of the main features of the labor market in these countries. We conduct a variety of policy...

Subnational fiscal autonomy-the basis for fiscal federalism in modern federations-is meant to serve two roles. First, local control over revenue collection is meantto provide a check on the capacity of central authorities to tax arbitrarily local capital. Second, retention of taxes raised...

Financial systems in developing countries tend to be"restricted"or"repressed"through burdensome reserve requirements, interest-rate ceilings, foreign-exchange regulations, rules about the composition of bank balance sheets, or heavy taxation of the financial sector. Why are governments drawn to...

How can one account for the puzzling behavior of insider-managers who, in stripping assets from the veryfirms they own, appear to be stealing from one pocket to fill the other? The authors suggest that such asset-stripping and failure to restructure are the consequences of interactions between...

In response to the problems of high coordination costs among the poor, efforts are underway in many countries to organize the poor through"self-help groups"(SHGs) -- membership-based organizations that aim to promote social cohesion through a mixture of education, access to finance, and linkages...