It is well-established that Arab labor markets share certain common characteristics, including an oversized public sector, high unemployment for educated youth, weak private sector dependent on government welfare for their survival, rapid growth in educational attainment, but much of it focused...

This paper introduces the 2012 round of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), a publicly-available nationally representative longitudinal household survey. We describe the key characteristics of the ELMPS, including the samples and questionnaires for each round. Additionally, we examine...

Marriage is the single most important economic transaction and social transition in the lives of young people. Yet little is known about the economics of marriage in much of the developing world. This paper examines the economics of marriage in North Africa, where asymmetric rights in marriage...

It is well-established that Arab labor markets share certain common characteristics, including an oversized public sector, high youth unemployment, weak private sectors, rapidly growing but highly distorted educational attainment, and low and stagnant female labor force participation. I argue in...

Marriage is a central stage in the transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper builds on the existing literature on the effect of marriage on women’s employment in MENA. Besides examining how different types of work are affected by early marriage (defined as...

There is potential for measurement problems in both retrospective and panel microdata. In this paper, we compare results on basic indicators related to labor markets and their dynamics from retrospective and panel survey data in Egypt, in order to determine the conditions under which results are...

Public sector hiring has been an essential component of the social bargains that have maintained political stability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). As these bargains eroded, public sector workforces contracted in relative terms owing to a partial freeze on hiring and the promise of...

We analyze in this paper the impact of male-dominated migration and remittance income on the participation and hours worked decisions of adults left behind, including the hours spent by women in subsistence and domestic work. We differentiate between a 'pure' migration (M) effect and the joint...

Female labor force participation has remained low in Egypt. This paper examines whether male international migration provides a leeway for women to enter the labor market and/or to increase their labor supply. In line with previous studies, we find a decrease in wage work in both rural and urban...

In this paper, we examine the wage returns to an extra year of primary school using a policy reform in Egypt, which reduced compulsory primary schooling from 6 to 5 years. Since this policy changed the duration of primary school while providing the same diploma, we can estimate the human capital...