Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Nada Mora

Author

Nada Mora
Lebanese University and Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS)

Nada Mora completed her S.B. in Economics (1998) and Ph.D. in Economics (2003) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She taught at the American University of Beirut from 2003 to 2007 where she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. She worked in central banking from 2007 to 2016 as an economist with the Bank of England, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and later a principal financial economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. During her time in central banking, she contributed to supervisory models and quantitative bank exams for stress testing. She currently lectures at the Lebanese University and is also a senior fellow at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS). Her primary research area is financial economics examining financial intermediation and financial crises mainly through the empirical commercial bank setting. She has contributed studies on funding costs of financial intermediaries, credit risk, and dollarization. Her work has been published in the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Money Credit and Banking, and the Journal of Finance.

Content by this Author

It’s not too late to find a way out of Lebanon’s financial crisis

Lebanon’s financial crisis developed over a long period of time before shaping into a dollar liquidity shortage from the summer of 2019. This column argues that a key first step in any effective policy response is to separate the government debt problem from the liquidity problem: this way, debt restructuring can proceed without causing more liquidity problems. The country also needs economic growth to begin to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio to a sustainable level.

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Beyond job creation: how can Egypt’s gender gap in work be closed?

More than 2 million jobs are needed each year to absorb new entrants into Egypt’s labour market and raise the country’s employment rate. The job challenge is even more acute for women, whose labour force participation remains low despite recent gains in education. This column reports on the second Development Dialogue, an ERF–World Bank Group joint initiative, which brought together students, scholars, policy-makers and private sector leaders at the American University in Cairo to consider how the country’s gender gap in work can be closed.

Digitalisation, global value chains and regional integration in MENA & SSA

Participation in global value chains is vital for countries pursuing structural transformation and inclusive economic development. This column summarises new evidence on how much production processes have been globalised in Africa and the Middle East relative to other regions; whether this process has taken place with partners within or outside the region; and whether it has taken place more in manufacturing or services.

How trade policy can reduce MENA’s cereal import vulnerability

Heavy dependence on imported cereals, combined with climate change, water scarcity and geopolitical uncertainty, continues to threaten food resilience across MENA. This column explains how an inclusive trade policy can play a key role in making the region’s food security less vulnerable to shocks.

The political economy of algorithms in the Middle East

The Middle East is entering a new political-economic era – one in which algorithms, data and artificial intelligence may become as strategically important as oil once was. Across the region, governments are investing heavily in digital infrastructure, smart governance and AI-driven economic transformation. This column outlines how AI and algorithmic governance are reshaping power, inequality and state capacity in the region.

The risks of a two-speed AI economy in MENA

Much of the debate about artificial intelligence in the Middle East and North Africa focuses on how many jobs it will replace. As this column explains, the more important challenge is that the new technology is likely to create a two-speed labour market, where countries with the capacity to invest in digital infrastructure and skills move rapidly ahead while others struggle to keep pace. Unless governments combine credible national reforms with targeted regional cooperation, AI could widen, not reduce, the economic divides across MENA.

From mega-investment to mega-productivity: closing MENA’s conversion gap

Across the Middle East and North Africa, governments are investing heavily in infrastructure, technology, diversification and new industries. Yet capital accumulation alone does not guarantee productivity growth. As this column argues, the region’s deeper challenge is its ‘investment-to-productivity conversion gap’: ensuring that large-scale investment translates consistently into stronger firms, technological diffusion, skills and better jobs. A different metric of success is required: not how much capital is deployed, but how much productive capability that capital leaves behind.

Sanctions and conflict: why corruption changes the equation

Why do sanctions produce such different political outcomes across the countries that have been targeted? This column reports research examining the role of pre-existing corruption in shaping the relationship between sanctions and subsequent conflict or political instability. The evidence indicates that trade sanctions are associated with higher conflict-related deaths where pre-existing corruption is high.

Why energy efficiency still struggles to attract finance in Egypt

Egypt has reduced energy subsidies and gradually adjusted domestic energy prices toward cost-recovery levels, improving the economic case for energy efficiency investments – but financing has not kept pace. Drawing on structured interviews with banks, developers and public officials, this column traces why energy efficiency projects in the country still struggle to attract capital, and sets out how a ‘financing ladder’ used elsewhere – from revolving funds to risk guarantees to green bonds – could close the gap.




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