Economic Research Forum (ERF)

Education

View all 50 columns

Preparing youth for the workforce of the future

Empowering Egypt’s young people for the future of work

Work in Arab economies: the dual threat of AI and graduate unemployment

Environment

View all 5 columns

The environmental impact of foreign direct investment in MENA

Energy subsidies: easy pickings for climate policy or political bombshell?

Climate change policy in MENA after Paris

Exchange rates

View all 15 columns

Global value chains and sustainable development

MENA’s unexpectedly low inflation

Civil conflicts and exchange rate misalignment

Financial markets

View all 31 columns

Why energy efficiency still struggles to attract finance in Egypt

Wrong finance in a broken multilateral system: red flags from COP30-Belém

Private capital and financial innovation in Egypt’s clean energy transition

Fiscal policy

View all 42 columns

Fiscal limits and debt sustainability in MENA economies

Macroeconomic policy-making for sustainable development in Egypt

Jordan: navigating through multiple crises

Foreign aid

View all 8 columns

Making aid-for-trade more effective in the MENA region

Retooling development aid in the 21st century

The importance of budget support for progress on sustainable development

Gender

View all 52 columns

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

Untapped talent, unrealised growth: jobs and women in the MENAAP region

Closing the gender gap in political participation in MENA

Most read

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.




Linkedin