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on MENA - Middle East and North Africa |
| By: | Nader Habibi (Brandeis University) |
| Abstract: | Turkish TV dramas (which are equivalent to soap operas in Western countries) have gained popularity in several countries in the past decade. They generate the largest amount of cultural export revenues and increase tourist interest in Turkey. Despite this positive contribution the TV drama industry does not receive adequate support from the Turkish government. The Turkish government must increase its financial and regulatory support for this industry. It should also create an independent committee of experts to review the TV drama projects that apply for government support. |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:brd:wpaper:84&r=ara |
| By: | Ayhan, Sinem H. |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the labor supply response of married women to their husbands' job losses (Added Worker Effect) due to the recent economic crisis in Turkey. Identification is achieved by exploiting the exogenous variation in the output of male-dominated sectors hard-hit by the crisis. Findings based on the instrumental variable approach suggest that the added worker effect explains up to 64% of the observed increase in female labor force participation observed in Turkey. |
| JEL: | D13 J21 C26 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc14:100387&r=ara |
| By: | Saleh, Mohamed |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:28921&r=ara |
| By: | Michalski , Tomasz; Ors , Evren |
| Abstract: | The authors provide the first evidence that changes in risk-based capital requirements for banks affect the real economy through international trade. Using a natural experiment – mandatory Basel II adoption in its Standardized Approach by all banks in Turkey on July 1, 2012 – they investigate the impact of new risk-weights applied to commercial letters of credit (CLC) on that country’s exports to 174 countries. The authors estimate the resulting payment-term-cost elasticity of CLC-financed trade to be between -0.5 and -1 while the overall trade elasticity to be between -0.032 and -0.179. Calculations suggest that both CLC-related bank pricing and rationing channels are involved. |
| Keywords: | commercial letters of credit; international trade finance; exports; risk-weights; Basel II |
| JEL: | F14 G21 G28 |
| Date: | 2014–10–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ebg:heccah:1064&r=ara |
| By: | Termos, Ali (American University of Beirut); Genc, Ismail H. (American University of Sharjah); Naufal, George S (Timberlake Consultants) |
| Abstract: | The strong economic ties between the GCC economies and the U.S. are manifested in three ways: currency peg, coupling of monetary policy, and the adoption of the U.S. dollar as the trading currency for oil. This paper examines how these dynamics result in a misalignment of the U.S. monetary policy with the business cycles of the GCC economies. The study shows how the staggering amount of remittances outflow of the GCC economies plays a stabilizing role as a tacit monetary policy tool. Incorporating remittances in the money demand equation results in a more robust model than otherwise. We further find that the effect of the Federal Funds rate on money demand in these countries diminishes in significance during the period of oil boom between 2002 and 2009. However, the transmission effect of the recession periods in the U.S. into the demand for money in the GCC countries is not statistically significant. |
| Keywords: | remittances, inflation, monetary policy, GCC |
| JEL: | F24 N15 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8810&r=ara |
| By: | Konstantin Yanovskiy (Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy); Ilia Zatcovetsky (Samuel Neaman Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology); Vadim Rotenberg (Tel Aviv University) |
| Abstract: | The analysis of events of the First Intifada focused on the question of how well founded the decisions made at the time were to introduce radical changes in the terror-fighting strategy. Most sources treat the process at Oslo as an outgrowth of Israel’s inability to suppress the Arab riots. We will consider an alternative interpretation in addition to this widespread view. The alternative approach will be based on understanding Oslo as the outcome of developments dictated by certain interests within Israel. The magnitude of the events of 1987–1990 does nothing to explain the leadership’s refusal to come up with a strategy for fighting terrorism in favor of choosing a strategy of pacification instead. Most of the steps taken by the Israeli leadership in the course of the conflict cannot be adequately explained without taking into account the struggle for power and the evolution of the leftist elite’s interests after their loss of the monopoly of power in 1977—along with their loss of motives for defending the country or the security of its citizens. Citizen security saw a drastic drop in the priority status it had formerly enjoyed as a state objective. This came in the wake of the disintegration of mechanisms of responsibility and the interest taken by the authorities in providing security. The Oslo Accords were in no way dictated by the First Intifada; even so, the Intifada is used extensively as a means of Oslo legitimatization. In actuality, one and the same process and one and the same political choice led to both the Oslo Accords and the terror boom. |
| Keywords: | First Intifada, security, terror incentives, weakness signals |
| JEL: | D74 D78 H56 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gai:wpaper:0108&r=ara |
| By: | Assaad, Ragui; Saleh, Mohamed |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of increased local supply of schooling on intergenerational mobility in education in Jordan. We use a unique data set that links individual data on own schooling and parents’ schooling for adults, from a household survey, with the annual supply of schools in the sub-district of birth, from a school census. We identify the effect by exploiting the variation in the supply of basic and secondary public schools across cohorts and sub-districts of birth in Jordan, controlling for both cohort and sub-district of birth fixed effects. School availability is determined based on the number of sex-appropriate public schools in the individual’s sub-district of birth at the time the individual was ready to start that schooling stage. Our findings show that the local availability of basic public schools does in fact increase intergenerational mobility in education. For instance, an increase in the supply of basic public schools of one school per 1,000 people reduces the father-son and mother-son associations of schooling by 10 percent and the father-daughter and mother-daughter associations by nearly 30 percent. However, an increase in the local supply of secondary public schools does not seem to have a similar effect on intergenerational mobility in education. |
| Keywords: | Supply of schooling, education, intergenerational mobility, inequality of opportunity, Middle East |
| JEL: | I24 I28 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:iastwp:28911&r=ara |
| By: | onour, Ibrahim |
| Abstract: | The primary aim of this paper to assess the output loss due to inefficient management of Sugar industry in Sudan. An industrial firm is scale inefficient if there is under utilization of production inputs. In this paper we employed nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to estimate scale efficiency of the major sugar producers in Sudan: Kenana sugar company and Sudan sugar company (SSC) manufacturers: Sennar, Assalaya, New Halfa, and Al-Genied. The finding of the paper indicate Kenana and Al-Genied manufacturers exhibit constant return to scale, whereas the other three sugar manufacturers of SSC: Sennar, Assalaya, and New Halfa exhibit increasing return-to-scale. Increasing return to scale implies inefficient utilization of available input mix. The average output loss due to scale inefficiency for SSC during the periods 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 are respectively 6%, 12%, 14%, and 16% of the benchmark company output level of Kenana. This result implies that for SSC company to increase its efficiency level, needs to manage cane production in Assalya, Sennar, and New Halfa projects on commercial basis, as in Al-Genied, by renting the agriculture land with its infrastructure to private firms to produce sugar cane on commercial basis. |
| Keywords: | Sugar efficiency, DEA, Sudan |
| JEL: | F3 M2 |
| Date: | 2015–02–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:61821&r=ara |