nep-isf New Economics Papers
on Islamic Finance
Issue of 2019‒12‒02
two papers chosen by
Bernardo Batiz-Lazo
Bangor University

  1. Rethinking the Lebanese economic miracle: The extreme concentration of income and wealth in Lebanon By Lydia Assouad
  2. Rally around the EU flag! Supra-nationalism in the light of Islamist terrorism By Nowak, Anna

  1. By: Lydia Assouad (PSE - Paris School of Economics, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS Paris - École normale supérieure - Paris - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    Abstract: I combine household surveys, national accounts and personal income tax records for the 2005-2014 period to produce the first estimates of the national income distribution in Lebanon. I find that income is extremely concentrated, with the top 1 and 10% of the adult population receiving 25 and 55% of national income on average, placing Lebanon among the countries with the highest level of income inequality in the world. These figures, which are the first recent statistics on income inequality in an Arab country, question the view of Lebanon as a paragon of economic success in the Middle East. The dynamism of the tourism, banking and real-estate sectors has benefited only a minority of the population, while a large part still lives in extreme poverty.
    Keywords: Lebanon,Inequality
    Date: 2019–06
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-02160275&r=all
  2. By: Nowak, Anna
    Abstract: Terror attacks are known to increase support for the attacked nation state and strengthen ingroup affiliations among citizens. Even though there is evidence that a terror attack can affect people all over the world, up to now no study has considered whether these nation-specific effects work on a supra-national level. This study investigates these effects by analyzing the impact of two severe Islamist terror attacks, the Paris attack from 2015 and the Manchester bombing from 2017, on citizens' attachment to the European Union (EU). We use data from the Eurobarometer surveys that were conducted around the time of these attacks. Applying an entropy- balancing approach before running ordered logistic regressions, we make use of the quasi-random variation in survey interviews to analyze the treatment effects of the two attacks. The results indicate that the so-called rally effects work for supra-national communities and that they increase EU citizens' attachment to and the identification with the EU. Thus, the study has relevant implications for research about terror attacks, as it provides new insights about the scope of rally effects and their mode of operation.
    Keywords: terrorism,rally effect,EU attachment,identity
    JEL: D74 F51 F53 H12
    Date: 2019
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:ciwdps:52019&r=all

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