Economic Development of the Mena

Nowadays, Countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the area comprising the Arab States, Iran, Israel, and Turkey, face enormous economic challenges in the Twenty-First Century: Stagnant real wages, deteriorating competitiveness, and rapidly growing populations and labor forces, have left most countries in the region unable to afford soaring living standards to much of the society. Yet the opportunities facing the region have never been greater: world trade is growing rapidly, capital flows to most of these countries have never been higher, and regional integration options are many as the result of the European Union's agreement for a free trade area in the Mediterranean. Why after years of negative per capita income growth, has the region been unable to accumulate sufficient reform momentum to sustain economic growth? Do important differences across countries hold lessons for the future? What are the social consequences of economic stagnation, and how might future adjustment costs be managed to protect the poor? How have individual countries in the region defined the challenges ahead? And what issues must be addressed to realize a more prosperous future? This course is designed to expose students to current views by academics and policy makers on past practices and future challenges facing the economies of the MENA region, as a set of developing countries that share a common heritage but also show countless differences. The emphasis will be on developing an overall understanding of the origins and nature of various economic problems while at the same time providing a critical examination of existing and alternative development policy formulations in MENA. The course will focus on population growth and the impact of demographic changes on employment, poverty, and income distribution; agriculture; education; capital formation; labor migration; economic liberalization; the rise and fall of the oil-based regional economy; the economics of structural adjustment and reform; economic regional integration and the challenges of globalization; as well as gender issues.