This paper analyzes some key features of the global monetary and financial crisis and the limitations faced by Central Banks. It also includes a brief description for the collectively previous efforts to anchor a Global Monetary and Financial regime. The main difficulties to “globalize”...

This paper contributes to a current and intense debate among economists on whether real exchange rate undervaluation can boost growth. It focuses on addressing econometric and empirical issues that casts doubt about the validity of such positive impact. It also allows for the possibilities that...

The objective of this paper is twofold. Firstly, we show how reliable datasets can be generated to perform distributional analysis in the Arab region, based on a useful procedure of desegregating grouped data published by official statistical agencies. Secondly, using accessible raw micro data...

Attempts to explain high and sticky credit card rates have given rise to a vast literature on credit card markets. This paper endeavors to explain the rates in the Turkish market using measures of non-price competition. In this market, issuers compete monopolistically by differentiating their...

The main objective of this paper is to perform a decomposition analysis of the level of inequality between socioeconomic groups and geopolitical regions of each country to better our understanding of the contribution of each socioeconomic group to overall inequality. This paper will fill in an...

With the process of expansion and the structural transformation taking place in Bahrain, it is crucial to measure and analyze the growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP), gross output and multifactor productivity (MFP) to develop proper policies that are in line with the new economic vision...

This paper analyzes the trend and changes of household expenditure polarization in five Arab countries between 1975 and 2006. Applying a set of recent polarization measures developed by Duclos et al. (2004) and Wolfson (1994), we find that polarization remained stable in most countries except...

This paper analyzes the determinants of cross-border acquisitions and the impact of foreign acquisitions on performance in the Turkish banking sector. The results suggest that foreign banks target relatively better performing banks to acquire, and that post-acquisition performance of the targets...

TThe optimal fiscal policy is countercyclical, aiming to keep the output close to its potential. Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that developing countries are unable to run countercyclical fiscal policies. Several researchers have attributed these sub optimal fiscal policies to two groups...

The purpose of this paper is to apply a general and unified approach to inequality measurement in Arab countries. To this end, a wide class of inequality indices, proposed by Olmedo et al. (2009) and based on the Bonferroni (1930) curve, rather than the Lorenz curve, is used. When local measures...