Urbanisation in China has long been held back by various restrictions on land and internal migration but has taken off since the 1990s, as these impediments started to be gradually relaxed. People have moved in large numbers to richer cities, where productivity is higher and has increased...

For the last two decades, MED11 countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestinian Autonomy, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey) have recorded the highest growth rate in inbound world tourism. In the same time, domestic tourism in these countries was growing very fast. MED 11...

This paper provides a simple, generic introduction to, and survey of, the transactional structures and rudimentary principles applicable to Shari`ah-compliant home purchase financings. The paper summarizes six of the most frequently used home purchase financing structures used by banks and...

Adequate infrastructure has long been viewed as an important factor in economic development. Based on regressions covering 76 advanced and emerging market economies, this paper estimates the impact of infrastructure and investment on income distribution. It finds that better infrastructure, both...

Azerbaijan is an oil rich country facing three severe problems at the same time: economic volatility, the need to promote industrial diversification and the recent sharp fall in oil prices which many expect to continue. It is thus a highly appropriate time to conduct a study for this...

To help explain the common failure of oil or other natural resource exporting countries to diversify into industry, it has been common to trace this failure to real exchange rate appreciation. This has also been done in Azerbaijan. However, because Azerbaijan has devoted so much of its oil...

Public infrastructure investments are seen as one of the key engines of economic growth in China. Yet, there is little quantitative evidence on the growth and distributive effects of public infrastructure investments (PII) in China. This paper applies a macro-micro simulation method, to assess...

What budget regime and monetary policy be applied to the regional government of Kurdistan. What would be the solutions available for a de facto political unit which depends on central government for fiscal policies and monetary policy? Every government can use two types of policies to manage...

Fear of the abusive exercise of eminent domain power and of potentially high costs resulting from serious holdout could cause slowdown and even suspension of land assembly for urban redevelopment, which is particularly devastating for the developing world. Invited takings, as recently emerged in...

Public infrastructure investments are seen as one of the key engines of economic growth in China. Yet, there is little quantitative evidence on the growth and distributive effects of public infrastructure investments (PII) in China. This paper applies a macro-micro simulation method, to assess...