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on MENA - Middle East and North Africa |
| By: | Erdogdu, Erkan |
| Abstract: | The world’s most expensive motor fuel (gasoline, diesel and LPG) is sold most likely in the Republic of Turkey. This paper investigates the key issues related to the motor fuel prices in Turkey. First of all, the paper analyses the main reason behind high prices, namely motor fuel taxes in Turkey. Then, it estimates the elasticity of motor fuel demand in Turkey using an econometric analysis. The findings indicate that motor fuel demand in Turkey is quite inelastic and, therefore, not responsive to price increases caused by an increase in either pre-tax prices or taxes. Therefore, fuel market in Turkey is open to opportunistic behaviour by firms (through excessive profits) and the government (through excessive taxes). Besides, the paper focuses on the impact of high motor fuel prices on road transport associated activities, including the pattern of passenger transportation, motorization rate, fuel use, total kilometers travelled and CO2 emissions from road transportation. The impact of motor fuel prices on income distribution in Turkey and Turkish public opinion about high motor fuel prices are also among the subjects investigated in the course of the study. |
| Keywords: | Model construction and estimation; fiscal policy; motor fuel prices |
| JEL: | C51 D72 E62 H23 Q43 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:55521&r=ara |
| By: | Tausch, Arno (University of Innsbruck); Heshmati, Almas (Jönköping University, Sogang University) |
| Abstract: | Following the attempt by Alesina and Guiliano (2013) to measure global culture and to project these measurements onto real choropleth geographical world maps, we utilize the data from the World Values Survey (WVS) to arrive at robust measurement scales of global economic, political and social values and to assess Turkey's place on them. Our study, which is based on 92,289 representative individuals with complete data in 68 countries, representing 56.89% of the global population, looks at hard-core economic values in the countries. From our new nine dimensions for the determination of the geography of human values, based on a promax factor analysis of the available data, we use six factor analytical scores to calculate a new Global Value Development Index, which combines: avoiding economic permissiveness; avoiding racism; avoiding distrust of the army and the press; avoiding the authoritarian character; tolerance and respect; and avoiding the rejection of the market economy and democracy. Our results show that the five best ranked countries are all western democracies. Our global value development index ranks Morocco twelfth – just behind the USA. Turkey is ranked 25, ahead of several EU member countries. But there are still considerable deficits concerning the liberal values components, which are very important for effective democracy, and there are very large regional differences, confirming the dictum by Huntington (1996) about Turkey as a torn country. The deficits suggest that the Turkish state, Turkish civil society and European decision makers would be well advised to continue to support civil society and secular democracy in Turkey. |
| Keywords: | index numbers and aggregation, international relations, international political economy, religion, bureaucracy, administrative processes, corruption |
| JEL: | C43 F50 Z12 D73 |
| Date: | 2014–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8163&r=ara |
| By: | Fredj Jawadi; Nabila Jawadi; Waël Louhichi |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to study the performance of Islamic finance regarding that of conventional finance over the last decade. This question is particularly interesting as within the current financial crisis, conventional finance is being rather ineffectual and risky and that in the same time one can expect that Islamic finance innovations could enable investors to get higher performance and lower risk. Indeed, thanks to the ethical and moral aspect of Islamic finance, its products seem to be more attractive to reinsure investors, control financial risk, stabilize financial systems and help to avoid future financial downturns. In this paper, we address this question using different indicators and measures of performance that we have applied to several conventional and Islamic stock indexes. While our findings seem to be heterogeneous over the whole period under consideration (2000 – 2011), we note that conventional financial products show higher returns than those of Islamic finance over the first subperiod (2000- 2006), while the Islamic finance outperforms classical finance during turbulent times and the financial crisis (2006- 2011). Such excess of performance during economic downturns may be explained by the fact that Islamic funds tend to avoid investing in high risk assets and are therefore less affected by economic crises. This implies that while keeping eyes on Islamic finance products, investors may expect high returns and less risk. Our findings also indicate that the investment in Islamic financial products may generate significant diversification benefits. |
| Keywords: | Islamic Finance, Financial Crisis, Innovations, Performance. |
| JEL: | G01 G10 |
| Date: | 2014–04–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-279&r=ara |
| By: | alamro, Hassan; Al-dalaien, Qusay |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to measure the impact of economic growth on unemployment in the Jordanian economy in the short and long-run during the period (1980-2011) by implementing the okun's law. The relationship is measured by performing the gap model with Hodrick-Prescott filter (HP filter) to calculate the potential gross domestic product. To this end, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to co-integration and the Error Correction Model (ECM) are employed to represent the short and long term relationship. The results indicate that the economic growth has a weak significant negative short- and long-run effect on unemployment. |
| Keywords: | unemployment, okun's law, gap model, Autoregressive Distributed Lag(ARDL) approach, co-integration, Error Correction Model. |
| JEL: | E23 E24 J01 |
| Date: | 2014–04–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:55302&r=ara |
| By: | Abdulghaffar, Mahmood; Al-Ubaydli, Omar; Mahmood, Omar |
| Abstract: | Five years after its inception, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) single market is malfunctioning in a litany of ways: there remain restrictions on the movement of goods, capital and labor across political boundaries. This paper describes the GCC single market’s malfunctions. We also propose remedies, taking advantage of the single market experiences of, among others, the European Union. A key conclusion is that there is an absence of GCC supranational political institutions powerful enough to enforce rules, with the exception of the Supreme Council, which is itself not designed to deal with day-to-day issues such as enforcing a single market. Consequently, the GCC needs to alter its institutional structure if it wants the single market to operate correctly. |
| Keywords: | Single market; Economic integration; Gulf Cooperation Council |
| JEL: | F15 F2 F20 F36 F53 |
| Date: | 2014–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:55413&r=ara |
| By: | Bouoiyour, Jamal; Selmi, Refk; Shahbaz, Muhammad |
| Abstract: | The core focus of this paper is to assess the relationship between the electricity consumption and institutions within rentierism phenomenon by incorporating economic growth, urbanization, trade openness and foreign direct investment in the case of Algeria. To this end, we have applied the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration and innovative accounting approach (variance decomposition and impulse response methods) over the period of 1971-2012. Our empirical results show that these variables are cointegrated in the long-run. We find that institutions play an important role to explain this cointegration. The response of electricity demand is increasingly negative due to the one standard deviation shock in institutions. This highlights an insightful evidence, providing that the poor governance drawbacks in a rentier state may affect directly electricity consumption or indirectly via urbanization and foreign direct investment. The contribution of economic growth to electricity consumption appears minor (the conservation hypothesis is limitedly supported), while that of trade openness seems insignificant. |
| Keywords: | Electricity consumption, institutions, rentier state. |
| JEL: | Q4 Q43 |
| Date: | 2014–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:55412&r=ara |
| By: | Adnen Ben Nasr; Thomas Lux; Ahdi Noomen Ajmi; Rangan Gupta |
| Abstract: | The financial crisis has fueled interest in alternatives to traditional asset classes that might be less affected by large market gyrations and, thus, provide for a less volatile development of a portfolio. One attempt at selecting stocks that are less prone to extreme risks, is obeyance of Islamic Sharia rules. In this light, we investigate the statistical properties of the DJIM index and explore its volatility dynamics using a number of up-to-date statistical models allowing for long memory and regime-switching dynamics. We find that the DJIM shares all stylized facts of traditional asset classes, and estimation results and forecasting performance for various volatility models are also in line with prevalent findings in the literature. Overall, the relatively new Markov-switching multifractal model performs best under the majority of time horizons and loss criteria. Long memory GARCH-type models always improve upon the short-memory GARCH specification and additionally allowing for regime changes can further improve their performance. |
| Keywords: | Islamic finance, volatility dynamics, long memory, multifractals. Tals. |
| JEL: | G15 G17 G23 |
| Date: | 2014–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-236&r=ara |
| By: | Christophe Godlewski (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg); Rima Turk-Ariss (Lebanese American University); Laurent Weill (LaRGE Research Center, Université de Strasbourg) |
| Abstract: | Sukuk, the shari’a-compliant alternative mode of financing to conventional bonds, have considerably expanded over the last decade. We analyze the stock market reaction to two key features of sukuk: type and characteristics of the shari’a scholar certifying the issue. We use the event study methodology to measure abnormal returns for a sample of 131 sukuk from eight countries over the period 2006-2013 and find that Ijara sukuk structures exert a positive influence on the stock price of the issuing firm. We observe a similar positive impact from shari’a scholar reputation and proximity to issuer. Overall our results support the hypotheses that the type of sukuk and the choice of scholars hired to certify these securities matter for the market valuation of the issuing company. |
| Keywords: | financial instruments, Islamic finance. |
| JEL: | G14 P51 |
| Date: | 2014 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lar:wpaper:2014-03&r=ara |
| By: | Al-Ubaydli, Omar |
| Abstract: | حقّق مجلس التعاون للدول الخليجية العربية إنجازات ملحوظة منذ إطلاقه في عام 1981، ومبدئيّاً تطوّر من تعاون أمنيّ وعسكريّ إلى تكامل اقتصاديّ يتمثّل في وحدة جمركية وسوق مشتركة وخطّة ملموسة لإنشاء عملة موحّدة. وتطمح الآن بعض الدول الأعضاء لتحويل العلاقة من نمط تعاونيّ إلى اتحاد ربّما شامل، وخصوصاً في المجالات الاقتصادية والدفاعية والسياسات الخارجيّة. ويخلق حلم الاتّحاد مجالاً لتحقيق مكتسبات كبيرة وغير مسبوقة للدول الخليجيّة. ولكنّ من بين الدول المتحمّسة نسبيّاً هناك تصوّر بأنّ من الممكن صياغة اتّحادٍ لا يمسّ باستقلال وسيادة الدول الأعضاء، ودون تعرّض الدول الصغيرة لهيمنة الدول الكبرى. هذا مبدأ خاطئ جذريّاً وغير واقعيّ؛ لأنّ التعاون الفعّال يقوم على التنازل عن المصلحة الآنيّة لأجل تحقيق هدف جماعي. وانتشار هذه العقلية يفسّر فشل تحقيق مردود كبير للمشاريع الاقتصاديّة الخليجيّة، كما أنّه يهدّد نجاح مشروع العملة الموحّدة. وإن أرادت الدول الخليجيّة أن تنظر إلى الاتّحاد بجدّية، فعليها أن تجري تغييرات أساسيّة في بنية مجلس التعاون وفي تصوّراتها عن متطلبات التفاعل البنّاء. والخبرة الأوروبيّة المتمثّلة في الاتّحاد الأوروبيّ تشكّل مصدراً مفيداً من المعلومات والتوصيات عن الطريق الأفضل لتحقيق هذا المشروع الطموح والواعد. |
| Keywords: | Single market; economic integration; economic union |
| JEL: | F15 F36 F51 F53 F55 |
| Date: | 2014–03–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:55414&r=ara |
| By: | Frédéric Pellegrin-Romeggio; Dominique Bonet Fernandez; Hatem Trimeche |
| Abstract: | Tourism is often seen as a key factor in boosting a country such as the Mediterranean. Although research generally describes the tourism industry in the form of different supply chains, there is little work on the problem of assembly. Through the concept of dynamic assembly, we present the case of the Tunisian tourism industry, dominated historically by European tour operators. We show that a reappropriation of the sector by Tunisian companies is at work. |
| Keywords: | tourism supply chain, dynamic assembly, Tunisia. |
| Date: | 2014–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-251&r=ara |
| By: | Dominique BONET FERNANDEZ; Joëlle MORANA; Fouzia BRAHIMI; Frédéric TEULON |
| Abstract: | This paper aims to examine the perception of skills of local workers in Algeria. Our exploratory research is based on a series of interviews with a panel in connection with the construction of the East-West highway. The results show that Algeria lacks of critical skills and keeps an outdated infrastructure in all vital sectors of the economy. It follows then a mass departure of executives and researchers in other countries and, in turn, calls for foreign expertise on major projects. In doing so, several solutions are recommended. Among these, knowledge management and definition of skills expected in each sector, to better identify this demand precisely and allow declining the missing profiles, skills to acquire and the necessary training and recruitment to perform. |
| Keywords: | Skills, Algeria, Labor, Foreign expertise |
| Date: | 2014–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-247&r=ara |
| By: | André Boyer; Marie José Scotto |
| Abstract: | Our paper aims at analyzing the case of a large Moroccan company: OCP (Office Cherifien des Phosphates). First, we present some definitions of CSR seen in a systemic perspective. We will explain the Moroccan context to determine the opportunities of CSR’s development in Morocco. The second part of our work will be focused on the evolution of the OCP in a changing Moroccan economy. The implementation and evolution of a Corporate Social Responsibility orientation will be exposed. The case discussion attempts to show the constraints the company has to deal with in its immediate and international environment, what are the answers given and the consequences which could be expected regarding the CSR approach. |
| Keywords: | CSR, Sustainable Development, Morocco, OCP |
| Date: | 2014–04–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-256&r=ara |
| By: | Jeanette McDonald; Erick Leroux; Frédéric Teulon |
| Abstract: | Sustainable tourism in the South of the Mediterranean: review of literature and research perspectivesMany tourists, tour operators and the public give prominence to sustainable tourism. However few studies provide a synthesis of work on this subject for the Maghreb countries. Based on a literature review, our research indicates that, in these countries, there is still progress to be made in terms of protection of the environment by local actors. Furthermore, more measures should be taken with respect to sustainable tourism in Maghreb countries. |
| Date: | 2014–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-238&r=ara |
| By: | Frédéric Teulon; Dominique Bonet Fernandez |
| Abstract: | A partir d’une synthèse des nombreuses études sur la situation économique et politique de ce pays depuis son indépendance, soit de manière directe (études spécifiques sur l’Algérie), soit de manière indirecte (études sur les stratégies de développement des Etat rentiers), nous présentons le modèle de développement et les réorientations de la politique économique, ayant abouti à la situation actuelle. Depuis l’indépendance, l’Algérie a passé près de la moitié des cinquante dernières années à construire un modèle de développement socialiste et l’autre moitié a essayé d’en sortir, entravée par un système de conservation du pouvoir et dans l’incapacité de diversifier son système productif. |
| Date: | 2014–04–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-244&r=ara |
| By: | Sandra Camus; Lubica Hikkerova; Soumaya Hergli; Guillaume Marceau; Jean-Michel Sahut |
| Abstract: | This article examines the company TUI and its Magic Life hotel chain. The remarkable success of this group in terms of sustainable development led him to develop its own norms and standards. Unfortunately, public policies and private initiatives such as TUI are now hampered by the reluctance of local businesses against projects. This shows that a development approach "sustainable tourism" should be supported by all stakeholders (government, businesses, citizens, interest group) to be truly effective. |
| Date: | 2014–04–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-264&r=ara |
| By: | C. Perret (IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - Université de Savoie - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE) - Savoie Mont-Blanc) |
| Abstract: | L'expérience algérienne nous fournit un terrain d'étude exceptionnel du fait de la mise en oeuvre de l'approche Nucleus dans des contextes socioculturels différents (Kabylie, Algérois, etc.). Dans le prolongement de nos travaux précédents, la question qui sous-tend cette étude est de savoir si la mise en oeuvre de l'approche Nucleus a plus de chance de fonctionner dans les régions urbaines ou rurales, déshéritées ou non, ou bien dans un environnement plus ou moins individualiste. |
| Keywords: | Approche nucleus ; développement territorial |
| Date: | 2014–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-00980881&r=ara |