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on Arab World |
| By: | INSEL, Aysu; SUNGUR CAKMAK, Nesrin |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the link between migration and trade, focusing on Turkey as a “sending” country and the selected trading partners, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, as the “receiving” countries in Europe. The research question is: “Do Turkish emigrants have positive impacts on the exports and imports of Turkey through preference and/or network channels.” The investigation methodology involves the fixed effect panel data analysis, and the estimation technique is the Least Squares under the assumption of the presence of cross section heteroskedasticity and the robust standard errors. This paper includes the 1980-2007 period, as well as two sub-periods, 1980-1995 and 1996-2007, in order to test the impact of the 1995 December Customs Union agreement between Turkey and EU countries. The trade function has been determined by the stock of Turkish population, per capita real income, real exchange rate, and the lagged dependent variable. It has been found that Turkish emigrants have significantly positive effect on trade mainly after the Custom Union Agreement, through the preference and network channels. |
| Keywords: | Migration; Trade; Panel data; Dynamic models; Turkey |
| JEL: | F22 C23 F14 |
| Date: | 2010–04–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:22100&r=ara |
| By: | Thomas Richter (GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies) |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that trade and capital account reforms within autocracies underlie the primacy of foreign currency procurement. A longitudinal comparison of four countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan) in the Middle East and North Africa region shows a historical sequencing of reforms. In the 1960s and 1970s, the foreign exchange scarcity was managed primarily by rising restrictions, accumulation of debt and a number of unilateral country-specific strategies, including broader economic openings (infitah) and isolated capital account liberalizations. However, IMF-friendly reforms (orthodox trade liberalization) only became a political option in the context of the extreme fiscal scarcity of the 1980s and 1990s, after the failure of these earlier policies and the drying up of alternative unconditional finance. Additionally, the time differences regarding when orthodox reforms are implemented within autocracies mainly relate to global and regional cycles of different external windfall gains. These findings complement recent debates about the rush to free trade in at least two regards. First, they point to distinct causal mechanisms depending on the type of political regime (for example, autocracy versus democracy), explaining the beginning of trade and capital account liberalizations among developing countries. Second, they reveal the conditional historical influence of neoliberal ideas among structurally similar autocracies. |
| Keywords: | Autocracy, trade and capital account liberalization, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt,Jordan |
| JEL: | F23 L14 O14 |
| Date: | 2010–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gig:wpaper:131&r=ara |
| By: | Aamer Abu-Qarn (Department of Economics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev); (Department of Economics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) |
| Abstract: | This paper revisits the defence-growth nexus for the rivals of the Israeli-Arab conflict over the last four decades. To this end, we utilize the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) causality test and the generalized variance decomposition. Contrary to the conventional wisdom and many earlier studies, we fail to detect any persistent adverse impact of military expenditures on economic growth. Our conclusions are kept intact even when we account for the possibility of endogenous structural breaks and during the post-1979 peace treaty period. Our findings imply insignificant peace dividends once the conflict is resolved and the military spending is cut to internationally acceptable standards. |
| Keywords: | Growth, Middle East, Israeli-Arab conflict, Causality, Generalized Forecast Error Variance Decomposition |
| JEL: | H56 O53 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bgu:wpaper:1003&r=ara |
| By: | Kerry Papps (Nuffield College) |
| Abstract: | sing worker-level panel data for Turkey, this paper analyses the separate employment effects of increases in the social security taxes paid by employers and increases in the minimum wage between 2002 and 2005. Variation over time and among low-wage workers in the ratio of total labour costs to the gross wage gives rise to a natural experiment. Regression estimates indicate that a given increase in social security taxes has a larger negative effect on the probability of a worker remaining employed in the next quarter than an equal-sized increase in the minimum wage. Those who retain their jobs in the next quarter also experience a larger reduction in working hours when social security taxes increase than when the minimum wage rises. This is consistent with a situation in which workers increase effort in response to an increase in wages. Men, rural-dwellers and those under 30 are found to have the strongest overall disemployment effects in response to increases in labour costs. |
| Date: | 2010–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koc:wpaper:1017&r=ara |
| By: | Luis Miotti (University Paris 13); El Mouhoub Mouhoud (University Paris Dauphine); Joel Oudinet (University Paris 13) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we analyze the determinants and the final use of remittances of migrants settled in France sending remittances to the southern Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan African countries. Research using microdata is very scarce in this region; we rely on a specially designed survey (2MO) we conducted in 2007-2008 of 1,000 people who remit to the three Maghreb countries, to Turkey and to the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. We also use a second survey conducted by the French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (DREES) which includes a sample of 3,500 people from the regions we are interested in. DREES microdata set enables us to understand who is more likely to remit (extensive margin). 2MO microdata allows an analysis of remittance behavior amongst those who remit (intensive margin) including sum and reported final use of remittances (housing, investment, current expenditures). Using these two microdatasets, we examine the likelihood to remit across the different waves of immigrants, the motivations to remit and the intended final use of remittances to highlight behavior differences between the different waves of immigration on the one hand, and on the other hand, the importance of looking beyond classical variables to better understand remittance behavior and its changing nature. Our first result shows that, after controlling for all the variables linked to income, education, age or nationality, subjective variables such as attachment to the home country, history and the institutional context of emigration play a determinant role in explaining remittance behavior. Our second result shows that migrants, who are in France for a long time and who have low education levels, also send remittances in order to invest in their home country. The degree of the migrant’s attachment to his home country thus appears as a discriminating subjective variable. By contrast, the migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa send money for current In this paper, we analyze the determinants and the final use of remittances of migrants settled in France sending remittances to the southern Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan African countries. Research using microdata is very scarce in this region; we rely on a specially designed survey (2MO) we conducted in 2007-2008 of 1,000 people who remit to the three Maghreb countries, to Turkey and to the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. We also use a second survey conducted by the French Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (DREES) which includes a sample of 3,500 people from the regions we are interested in. DREES microdata set enables us to understand who is more likely to remit (extensive margin). 2MO microdata allows an analysis of remittance behavior amongst those who remit (intensive margin) including sum and reported final use of remittances (housing, investment, current expenditures). Using these two microdatasets, we examine the likelihood to remit across the different waves of immigrants, the motivations to remit and the intended final use of remittances to highlight behavior differences between the different waves of immigration on the one hand, and on the other hand, the importance of looking beyond classical variables to better understand remittance behavior and its changing nature. Our first result shows that, after controlling for all the variables linked to income, education, age or nationality, subjective variables such as attachment to the home country, history and the institutional context of emigration play a determinant role in explaining remittance behavior. Our second result shows that migrants, who are in France for a long time and who have low education levels, also send remittances in order to invest in their home country. The degree of the migrant’s attachment to his home country thus appears as a discriminating subjective variable. By contrast, the migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa send money for current expenditures rather than for investment. The obligation feeling seems to be the important motivation for remit. |
| Date: | 2010–04–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:csl:devewp:288&r=ara |