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on Arab World |
| By: | Baybars Karacaovali (Fordham University, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | Turkey has been an active user of antidumping since the 1990s and more recently added safeguards and countervailing duties to its temporary trade barriers (TTBs). Turkey is a founding member of the World Trade Organization and formed a customs union with the European Union (EU) in 1996. It has also signed numerous preferential trade agreements the EU has been involved in as part of its EU candidacy. The drastic intra and extra-group trade liberalisation brought by the relations with the EU seems to be important determinants in the rise of Turkey’s contingent protection over the last decade. Moreover, apart from an increase in the number of initiations, the higher rate of initiations finding support and sluggishness in the removal of TTBs over time appear to have played a role in their build-up. Turkey has been significantly affected by the 2008-9 global economic crisis and at the same time kept increasing the use of TTBs. The increase as of 2009 was in line with the recent upward trend but the response to the crisis may come with a lag. In general, Turkey does not target established EU members with TTBs although there is no restriction. Turkey mainly targets developing countries, especially China, at rates disproportional to their import market share. |
| Keywords: | Temporary trade barriers, antidumping, safeguards, countervailing duties, Turkey |
| JEL: | F13 F14 F15 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:frd:wpaper:dp2011-02&r=ara |
| By: | Halicioglu, Ferda |
| Abstract: | This study is concerned with understanding the factors of life expectancy in Turkey for the period 1965-2005. The determinants of life expectancy in Turkey are related to selected social, economical and environmental factors. Bounds testing approach to cointegration is employed to compute the long-run elasticities of longevity with respect to the selected economic, social and environmental factors. There exists no previous study that estimates empirically the determinants of life expectancy in Turkey on the basis of time series data and cointegration framework. Empirical results suggest that nutrition and food availability along with health expenditures are the main positive factors for improving longevity whereas smoking seems to be the main cause for mortality. The results also draw a number of policy recommendations for improving longevity. |
| Keywords: | life expectancy; econometrics; cointegration; elasticities; Turkey. |
| JEL: | I12 C22 |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:30840&r=ara |
| By: | Nora Elbialy (University of Hamburg); Miguel A. García-Rubio (University of Granada) |
| Abstract: | Egypt started a recent judicial reform program in 2007, which can be considered the first ever since the establishment of the National Egyptian Judicial System in 1952. It focuses mainly on solving organizational problems within First Instance Courts (FIC), as they form the active cell of the Egyptian judicial system. However the efficiency of FICs is still doubtable to a large extent. This paper provides for the first time an efficiency analysis of 22 FICs in Egypt using the technique of Data Envelop Analysis (DEA). The main strength of this study is to consider the number of computers per court, as none of the previous papers on court efficiency has included a capital variable when defining their court production function before. Our results show that there are no significant differences observed in terms of management efficiency between the civil and criminal FICs, however criminal FICs districts are superior with respect to their corresponding civil districts in terms of program efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Egyptian Judicial System; Efficiency; Data envelopment analysis |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mar:magkse:201119&r=ara |
| By: | Yves, Bourdet (Department of Economics, Lund University); Persson, Maria (Department of Economics, Lund University) |
| Abstract: | The current political turmoil in the Arab world has contributed to renewed interest in the Barcelona Process and how it can be improved in order to promote inclusive growth in the non-EU Mediterranean countries. In this paper, we explore whether deeper integration in the form of trade facilitation – i.e. improved and simplified trade procedures – could be an important part of a reform agenda. Adopting a Southern perspective by focusing on exports from non-EU Mediterranean countries to the EU, we use data from the World Bank’s Doing Business Database on the efficiency of trade procedures to formally test whether the efficiency of trade procedures affects (i) bilateral volumes of exports, and (ii) the number of products that are exported. We find that improving export and import procedures to the best practice levels (for each group of countries) is likely to increase the value of non-EU Mediterranean exports by 34% and to increase the number of products exported by non-EU Mediterranean countries by 21%. A main implication of the results is therefore that more efforts should to be devoted to trade facilitation in order to reap the benefits of deeper integration between the two groups of countries. |
| Keywords: | Barcelona Process; Mediterranean Union; European Union; Deeper Integration; Trade Facilitation; Export volumes; Export Diversification |
| JEL: | C23 F15 O24 |
| Date: | 2011–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lunewp:2011_015&r=ara |
| By: | Flaig, Dorothee; Siddig, Khalid; Grethe, Harald; Luckmann, Jonas; McDonald, Scott |
| Abstract: | A high number of Palestinian workers used to work in Israel for decades. They are mostly employed in low-skilled jobs in Israeli sectors which are highly dependent on foreign labour, namely agriculture and construction. With the beginning of the second Intifada in 2000 border restrictions increased severely due to security concerns, limiting employment possibilities for Palestinians and leaving Palestine with severe unemployment and loss of income. Israeli employers have substituted Palestinian workers with an increasing number of foreign workers, mostly coming from Asia. Growing unemployment among Israeli unskilled workers caused Israel to impose quotas on the employment of foreigners. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the benefits of lifting movement and access restrictions between Israel and the West Bank for both economies. The macro-economic effects of the Israeli labour policy are important to determine the absorptive capacity of the Israeli labour market. Therefore, we use an extended version of the single country CGE model âSTAGEâ (McDonald, 2009), adapted to a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Israel for the year 2004 (Siddig et al., forthcoming), to simulate the effects of different Israeli labour policy regimes. |
| Keywords: | labor market, CGE, Labor and Human Capital, |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea11:103861&r=ara |
| By: | Sdiri, Hanen; Ayadi, Mohamed |
| Abstract: | Innovation is widely recognised as a key driver of economic growth and competitiveness. But, some works focus especially on analyzing the determinants and the effects of innovation while distinguishing between its various types (product innovation, process innovation, radical innovation and incremental innovation). The analysis of the determinants is certainly important, but few research efforts testing the way in which firms make the decision to innovate. Based on a sample of 108 Tunisian service firms, the purpose of the paper is to explain the way in which firms make the decision to innovate: simultaneous (one-stage model) or sequential (two-stage model). We find that the two-stage model has a statistically-significant advantage in predicting the innovation. In practice, the sequential model illustrates well the innovation making-decision procedures. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Decision making; Service sector. |
| JEL: | O32 O31 L80 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:30898&r=ara |