Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Amira Elayouty

Author

Amira Elayouty
Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University

Amira Elayouty (Dr.) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Egypt. She has been awarded her Ph.D. degree in Statistics in 2017 from the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom; and currently is an Honorary Professorial Research Fellow within the same school. Elayouty is also working as an Adjunct Faculty member at the School of Business in the American University in Cairo. Her teaching interests include inferential statistics and statistical modelling. Her research interests include spatio-temporal models, generalised additive non-parametric regression models and functional data analysis with a particular focus on high-frequency and big environmental and socio-economic data and statistics. She is interested in developing and using advanced statistical methods to allow for a better understanding of the rapid environmental and socioeconomic changes and their impacts on the places, species, and society and to improve the risk and uncertainty assessment of these changes. Elayouty has been elected as a Global representative for the International Environmetrics Society (TIES) for the period 2021-2025 and is currently leading the new early-career researchers mentoring scheme committee for the society.

Content by this Author

Food security and child malnutrition in Africa

There is a complex relationship between climate change, food security and children’s nutritional status. This column outlines the research evidence, focusing in particular on the experience of African countries and poorer communities within them.

Climate change: the impact on child malnutrition in the Nile basin

There are complex interactions between climate change, food security and children’s nutritional status. This column summarises new research on these relationships in the context of Egypt, Ethiopia and Uganda, including the role of socio-economic factors in shaping child health, as well as possible routes and biological aspects that could explain their impacts.

Most read

Empowering Egypt’s young people for the future of work

Egypt’s most urgent priority is creating more and better jobs for its growing youth population. This column reports on the first Development Dialogue, an ERF–World Bank joint initiative, which brought together students, scholars, policy-makers and private sector leaders at Cairo University to confront the country’s labour market challenge. The conversation explored why youth inclusion matters, what the data show and how dialogue and the forthcoming Country Economic Memorandum can inform practical pathways to accelerate job creation.

Preparing youth for the workforce of the future

As economies undergo rapid digital and green transformations, young people face a growing mismatch between their skills and what the modern labour market needs. This column argues that enabling youth to compete in the workforce of the future requires systemic reforms in education, skills formation and labour market institutions, especially in developing economies.

Connectivity and conflict: understanding the risks of inequality in the Middle East

While high inequality does not always lead to conflict, new research reported in this column shows that widespread internet access acts as a catalyst, transforming economic grievances into political instability. For policy-makers in the Middle East and North Africa, this means that as digital connectivity expands, the security costs of ignoring economic disparities rise dramatically. The combination of idle youth, high inequality and high-speed internet is a volatile mix.

The political economy of stalled structural reforms in MENA

There is a persistent pattern to the structural reforms that are required to underpin economic progress in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa: ambitious strategies are announced and partially implemented, but ultimately they are diluted or reversed. This column argues that the repeated stalling of reform is not primarily a failure of economic design. Rather, it reflects deep-seated political economy constraints rooted in rent dependence, elite bargaining and weak institutional credibility. Without addressing these underlying dynamics, reform efforts are likely to remain symbolic rather than transformative.

Closing the gender gap in political participation in MENA

Women across the Middle East and North Africa participate less than men in politics – not only in political parties and elections, but also in petitions, boycotts, protests and strikes. This column reports evidence from ten countries showing that differences in education, employment and political attitudes explain part of this disparity, yet a significant gender gap remains.




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