The economics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) / Joseph Pelzman.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-266) and index.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is a large, complex, and diverse region, which faces a wide range of economic issues. The MENA group includes Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. This book uses analytical tools drawn from the trade, labor, finance, and development literature to critically analyze and compare these countries' economic policies. The approach taken in this book is to focus on the economic policies and institutional arrangements which have evolved in MENA and which may serve to explain the differences in each country's economic performance. The key objective of the book is to unravel the context-specific variety of growth-promoting policies within MENA rather than focus on specific countries. This book stresses that the poor performance of Arab MENA can be chiefly explained by their aversion to a Western paradigm of market economics. In the advanced industrial countries and in Israel, "globalization" is largely viewed in economic terms -- the free movement of goods, services, labor and capital across borders. In the Arab MENA, however, "globalization" is viewed in largely ideological terms and has been regarded as a new version of imperialism. Consequently, the Arab MENA region remains one of the most un-globalized regions in the world. The book serves as both a textbook and a summary of the very large literature on MENA. It examines the following economic realities of the region and compares them across the MENA economies: Technology gap and comparative development The value of education and human capital development Water and food security The economics and politics of oil Population growth, role of gender, and labor mobility The role of the state as economic actor The economic value of democracy The prospects for regional integration Readership: Undergraduate and graduate students of developmental economics and international economics.