Starting from the observation that intra-regional trade flows in the Mashreq are abnormally low, the paper reviews the existing trade agreements and the alternative options that the countries of the region could embrace in order to deepen their trade relations. This discussion is set against the...

Fertility in the MENA countries shows that transition is an undeniable trend in this region, where the paradigm of demographic transition seemed to lose all its credibility. Analysis of the proximate determinants of fertility shows that contraception is becoming the leading inhibiting factor,...

The paper examines the behavior of stock prices in four GCC markets: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia. The data consists of weekly stock price indexes from September 1994 to April 1998. Three tests of the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis(EMH) are applied. The first two, unit...

Developing countries have a considerable stake in supporting a comprehensive new round of multilateral trade negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to achieve further trade liberalization and benefit from intersectorial trade-off.For their constructuve particiaption in...

This article reviews the different methods of constructing multilateral output and productivity indices for agriculture in cross-country panel studies. We show that various multilateral output indices used by different researchers can have considerable disparities, thus rendering the comparison...

This empirical study investigates the process of adjustment of imports to changes in the level of domestic activity (income) and the relative prices in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Countries. The aim is to provide new estimates if the aggregate demand for imports in these countries over...

This study considers those wage earners who are covered by a social security program as part of the formal sector and those wage earners who are not covered by any social security program as part of the informal sector. Using 1994 Household Expenditure Survey I first examine how individuals are...

This paper overviews and analyzes Egypt's service sector, its commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the country's main service liberalization policies. The paper compares Egypt's GATS commitments to those of other developing countries. It argues that the pattern...

Recently, there has been an upsurge of empirical studies that test the convergence prediction of the neoclassical growth theory at the country, regional, state or provincial levels. These studies examine whether poorer economies will eventually catch up with richer ones in terms of both income...

Using an evolutionary perspective that places the present phase of human development in a historical context, the paper examines the state and nature of human development and identifies factors that determine its enhancement for the 21st Century.