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on MENA - Middle East and North Africa |
| By: | Rim Ben Mouelhi (Manouba University); Mohamed Goaied |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at analyzing the characteristics of female employment and unemployment in Tunisia and at identifying the main incentives and constraints to female labor participation and employment status. Since the 2000’s, female participation stagnated at around 25 percent in Tunisia, which is higher than the average in the MENA countries, but it is at the half the world rate. Several socio-cultural factors associated with economic determinants are causing changes in the participation of women in the labor market. Marital status is considered as a constraint for labor force participation decision and employment status for woman. Woman education attainment influences both her participation decision and type of employment choice. The services sectors provide the majority of female jobs, especially in the public sector which is considered as a “family friendly” sector. Women are poorly represented in positions of responsibility and leadership and the rate of self-employment among Tunisian women is low. The female unemployment rate is above that of men. |
| Date: | 2017–11–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1160&r=ara |
| By: | Burak Eroglu (Istanbul Bilgi University); Secil Yildirim-Karaman (Altinbas University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of the policy decisions by the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) and Federal Reserve (FED) on the financial markets in Turkey between 2010 and 2016, the period in which CBRT adopted new policy objectives. We investigate the impact of monetary policy shocks on the term structure of interest rates, exchange rates and credit default swap (CDS) rates using VAR framework. For identification, we rely on the assumption that monetary policy shocks are heteroscedastic. Our results show that expansionary monetary policy shocks by the CBRT made the yield curve steeper, caused TL to depreciate and CDS rates to decrease. As for FED decisions, expansionary decisions decreased the bond yields and CDS rates and caused TL to appreciate. The paper contributes to the literature by investigating the response of the term structure of interest rates and other asset prices for the period in which CBRT prioritized financial stability and did not make guidance for the future stance of monetary policy and by testing whether bond yields with various maturities responded to monetary policy shocks differently. Our results imply that not following a long term inflation target and lack of communication weakened the control of the CBRT over the long term interest rates. |
| Keywords: | Monetary policy; Term structure of interest rates; Asset prices; Heteroscedasticity based identification |
| JEL: | E40 E43 E44 E52 E58 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bli:wpaper:1705&r=ara |
| By: | Eda YILMAZ (Hacettepe University) |
| Abstract: | Higher education institutions (HEIs) are aiming to be by far autonomous regarding rising demand for higher education in recent years. Financial autonomy is one of the momentous determinants in accordance with tuition fee and loans. Managing resources independently would allow universities to reach their strategic aims more successfully. Many criteria are allowed for considering financial autonomy of university and among these criteria determination of tuition fee freely by a university or by an external authority is an important decision to finance public higher education. While tuition fee approach derives from financing higher education by public resources, HEIs would be the authority to decide the amount of it between upper and lower limits settled on by the external authority. Further to that, loan opportunities to pay the fees should be taken into account for especially poor-background students which affect the attendance level. These loan opportunities may be provided either by the government or private sector. In this study how tuition fee is decided due to financial autonomy in Turkey and which loan options are available to students will be examined in comparison with Australia to show the effect transparently. |
| Keywords: | Higher education finance, autonomy. |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:5807264&r=ara |
| By: | Olfa Frini (Institut Supérieur de Comptabilité & d’Administration des Entreprises ISCAE, Manouba University, Tunisia); Christophe Muller (Aix-Marseille Univ. (Aix-Marseille School of Economics), CNRS, EHESS and Centrale Marseille) |
| Abstract: | Fertility analysis in Tunisia is revisited by focusing on regulation instruments instead of the number of births or the number of children alive. In Muslim societies, in which marriage is the exclusive acknowledged childbearing context, a woman may be seen as starting her fertility regulation period by postponing her age at marriage. Once married, she can adjust the delay before her first birth control. Then, she can decide whether or not to use a contraceptive, and finally she can select a specific contraception method. These four decisions, approximately arranged sequentially, may somewhat interact with the sequential stages of the woman’s lifecycle and involve distinct motivations: (1) enrolment in higher education; (2) participation in the labor market; (3) a given fertility objective; and (4) dealing with middle age and old age health problems. Using data from the 2001 Tunisian PAP-FAM survey data, we estimate econometric models that provide an approximate description of fertility regulation as an outcome of the above sequential decisions. Accordingly, the significant effects of our explanatory variables gradually arise and vanish across the models as the women proceeds in her fertility regulation process. Our findings suggest that family network and sociocultural environment greatly shape the household preference for children. Although strict causality inference is beyond the possibilities of a single cross-section, the elicited correlations point to suggestive explanations that call for additional collection efforts to better capture lifecycle decisions of family members and the interactions of the extended family across this lifecycle. |
| Keywords: | fertility regulation, age at marriage, marriage duration at first birth control, contraceptive use, contraception method, Tunisia |
| JEL: | J12 J13 C25 C41 |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:1739&r=ara |
| By: | David Cuberes (Clark University); Marc Teignier (Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, survey data are used to document the presence of gender gaps in selfemployment, employership, and labor force participation in seven Balkan countries and Turkey. The paper examines the quantitative effects of the gender gaps on aggregate productivity and income per capita in these countries. In the model used to carry out this calculation, agents choose between being workers, self-employed, or employers, and women face several restrictions in the labor market. The data display very large gaps in labor force participation and in the percentage of employers and self-employed in the labor force. In almost all cases, these gaps reveal a clear underrepresentation of women. The calculations show that, on average, the loss associated with these gaps is about 17 percent of income per capita. One-third of this loss is due to distortions in the choice of occupations between men andwomen. The remaining two-thirds corresponds to the costs associated with gaps in labor force participation. The dimensions of these gender gaps and their associated costs vary considerably across ages groups, with the age bracket 36–50 years being responsible for most of the losses. |
| Keywords: | gender inequality, entrepreneurship talent, factor allocation, aggregate productivity, span of control, Balkans, Turkey |
| JEL: | E2 J21 J24 O40 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2017-10&r=ara |
| By: | Hanan Nazier (Cairo University) |
| Abstract: | This paper attempts to investigate crucial questions of labor demand related to how firms respond to changes in wages, how this responds to changes according to skill levels. This is reached through estimating own wage elasticities of demand for labor, and elasticities of substitution among different labor inputs disaggregated according to skill level in Egypt. Based on micro establishment level data obtained from Egypt enterprise survey 2008 conducted by the World Bank. Though skill can be described by education level, the present study use occupation to define skills. As such it identifies four occupations professionals, skilled production workers, unskilled production workers and non-production workers. |
| Date: | 2017–11–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1158&r=ara |
| By: | ?rem D?D?NMEZ (Hacettepe Üniversitesi) |
| Abstract: | Supply and demand of funds are met in financial markets. Those who have an excess of fund and lack of fund come together in these markets. Factors such as increasing transaction volume, development of technology, and free economies in financial markets that have intermediary function made financial institutions dependent each other and raised the risk in these markets. These risks firstly affected banks, then dispersed towards other sectors and finally created a full-scale crisis. Financial transaction tax offered prelusively by Keynes in 1970?s but not considered enough, came up in 2007 together with economic crisis most especially in USA (which has strong financial markets )as a political tool, and also in other developed and developing countries. A financial transaction tax is a political tool offered to struggle with the financial crisis and to strengthen the financial systems. The main purpose of this tax (which is also known as Tobin tax) is to spread capital movements into long-term. Thus, it is possible to preclude both speculative movements and an unsteady situation in financial markets by reducing excess profit obtained in the short-run. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a financial transactions tax on Turkey that is planned to be implemented globally by revealing both positive and negative aspects of it. |
| Keywords: | financial sector, Turkey, financial transaction tax |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sek:iacpro:5007278&r=ara |
| By: | Docquier, Frédéric; Tansel, Aysit; Turati, Riccardo |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates whether emigrants from MENA countries self-select on cultural traits such as religiosity and gender-egalitarian attitudes. To do so, we use Gallup World Poll data on individual opinions and beliefs, migration aspirations, short-run migration plans, and preferred destination choices. We find that individuals who intend to emigrate to OECD, high-income countries exhibit significantly lower levels of religiosity than the rest of the population. They also share more gender-egalitarian views, although the effect only holds among the young (aged 15 to 30), among single women, and in countries with a Sunni minority. For countries mostly affected by Arab Spring, since 2011 the degree of cultural selection has decreased. Nevertheless, the aggregate effects of cultural selection should not be overestimated. Overall, self-selection along cultural traits has limited (albeit non negligible) effects on the average characteristics of the population left behind, and on the cultural distance between natives and immigrants in the OECD countries. |
| Keywords: | International migration,self-selection,cultural traits,gender-egalitarian attitudes,religiosity,MENA region |
| JEL: | F22 J61 Z10 |
| Date: | 2017 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:146&r=ara |
| By: | Frédéric Docquier (FNRS & IRES, Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), and FERDI (France)); Aysit Tansel (Middle East Technical University (Turkey), IZA (Germany) and ERF (Egypt)); Riccardo Turati (IRES, Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium)) |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically investigates whether emigrants from MENA countries self-select on cultural traits such as religiosity and gender-egalitarian attitudes. To do so, we use Gallup World Poll data on individual opinions and beliefs, migration aspirations, short-run migration plans, and preferred destination choices. We find that individuals who intend to emigrate to OECD, high-income countries exhibit significantly lower levels of religiosity than the rest of the population. They also share more gender-egalitarian views, although the effect only holds among the young (aged 15 to 30), among single women, and in countries with a Sunni minority. For countries mostly affected by Arab Spring, since 2011 the degree of cultural selection has decreased. Nevertheless, the aggregate effects of cultural selection should not be overestimated. Overall, self-selection along cultural traits has limited (albeit non negligible) effects on the average characteristics of the population left behind, and on the cultural distance between natives and immigrants in the OECD countries. |
| Keywords: | International migration, self-selection, cultural traits, gender-egalitarian attitudes, religiosity, MENA region. |
| JEL: | F22 J61 Z10 |
| Date: | 2017–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:koc:wpaper:1716&r=ara |
| By: | Alvaredo, Facundo; Assouad, Lydia; Piketty, Thomas |
| Abstract: | In this paper we combine household surveys, national accounts, income tax data and wealth data in order to estimate the level and evolution of income concentration in the Middle East for the period 1990-2016. According to our benchmark series, the Middle East appears to be the most unequal region in the world, with a top decile income share as large as 61%, as compared to 36% in Western Europe, 47% in the USA and 55% in Brazil. This is due both to enormous inequality between countries (particularly between oil-rich and population-rich countries) and to large inequality within countries (which we probably under-estimate, given the limited access to proper fiscal data). We stress the importance of increasing transparency on income and wealth in the Middle East, as well as the need to develop mechanisms of regional redistribution and investment. |
| Date: | 2017–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12405&r=ara |
| By: | Hatem Jemmali (University of Tunis El-Manar, Tunisia) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the level and main drivers of economic inequality among rural–urban, littoral-inland and nonmetropolitan-metropolitan households in Tunisia using nationally representative data set. On average and across the welfare distribution, households living in privileged regions, mainly in urban and metropolitan areas, are found to be wealthier than their counterparts in rural and nonmetropolitan areas. The analysis finds a non-uniform inequality as well (U-shape) across quantiles in the logarithm of household's consumption expenditure per capita suggesting that consumption differentials are found to be much higher at the top end and the bottom than at the middle of the welfare distribution. Using the newly developed methods of decomposition, we endeavor to decompose the distributional welfare differentials among households into endowment effects, explained by differences in households' characteristics, including the head's educational and employment characteristics, and unexplained effects attributable to unequal returns to these covariates. We find that the endowment effects dominate the return effects and contribute more to the overall gap throughout the welfare distribution. General household’s characteristics and educational level of the head appear as the main and common drivers of different regional consumption differentials. |
| Date: | 2017–11–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1159&r=ara |