ERF 27th Annual Conference: SDGs and External Shocks in the MENA Region: From Resilience to Change in the Wake of COVID-19

FromMay 17, 2021 To Jun 28, 2021

Online Webinars

ERF annually holds a highly visible conference that concentrates on issues relevant to economic policy in the region. This flagship event draws on the contributions of senior policy makers, high profile academic researchers as well as referred open call papers to promote region-wide and international knowledge and evidence-based development and public policy debates and mentorship of promising researchers.

The ERF Annual Conference, a tradition maintained since 1995, has become the premiere regional event for economists of the Middle East, where new ideas are created and disseminated; where the community of researchers meet and where excellence is celebrated. Established in 1993, ERF was created to build strong research capacity in the region. It was one of the first, if not the only, institutions to connect economic researchers from across the region.

The Arab Fund has been gratefully generously sponsoring the ERF Conference for some 18 years. Thanks to this un-wavered commitment, ERF has been able to successfully deliver against its core mission and continue to convene this flagship event.

This year the conference is held under the theme of “Sustainable Development Goals and External Shocks in the MENA region: From Resilience to Change in the Wake of COVID-19”. This is a timely topic in the light of the significant political, social and economic transformation in the region.

There will be three main plenary sessions and three special panels, which will feature world-renowned economists, social scientists and policymakers and the results of three major projects recently completed. The conference sessions will feature a larger number of diverse papers across cross-cutting themes selected on the basis of rigorous refereeing process in response to an open call for papers. Following the last special panel, a closing plenary session will celebrate winners of what has become a regional certificate of excellence: The Best Paper Award.

Conference Theme

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented shock for the world economy. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) described this shock as the “Great Lockdown” that will reduce global GDP by 3% in 2020. In addition to this, oil prices have reached the lowest record in modern history. With the pandemic sweeping across the oil-rich Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the latter has to face two concomitant shocks. Obviously, the response to these two external shocks cannot be dissociated from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While several MENA countries were making a relatively good progress in these goals, they will have now to re-organize their priorities and adopt active economic and social policies at both the short and the long-term horizons.

Indeed, given the transformational nature of the current period, the future will chiefly depend on how countries of the region will adjust their policies and strategies, and on how they respond under their respective constraints. Both active stabilization policies (targeting the short term) and structural ones (aiming at changing the structure of economies in the long run) will have to be adopted. Such policies, and consequently research priorities will differ depending on the country characteristics in the MENA region. The latter can be divided into groups of countries with relatively close features: the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, countries with political unrests, countries with internal or external conflicts, and the other middle-income countries. Despite the significant interdependences between their economies, these groups have become more distinct than in the past, and the impact of the shocks is likely to make them diverge even more which requires different policy responses when it comes to SDGs.

More specifically, with the pandemic and lower oil prices, economic growth will be negatively affected, hence poverty rates (SDG1), social protection and inequalities (SDG10), even hunger (SDG2), are likely to increase. This slowdown will also exert a negative impact on demand, production and thus job creation (SDG8 and SDG9). Moreover, with various countries in some kind of lockdown, while many scholars assume that this will be beneficial for the environment at least in the short term (SDG7, SDG13 and SDG14), carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are still at high levels.

At the human capital level, the COVID-19 raised also several questions in terms of education and health. First, at the education one, schools, public and private universities moved to e-learning. It is important to analyze to what extent the long-distance learning is efficient (SDG4) and feasible with limited technological infrastructure in MENA countries. Second, the pandemic has made clear many of the problems facing the countries health care system in particular equipment, trained staff and infrastructure (SDG3).

Therefore, regional and multilateral collaboration (SDG17) is clearly required to curb the negative effects of these shocks. This can be justified by the need to accelerate the development to new COVID-19 diagnostics and vaccines and to help countries overcome its negative effects (such as the rapid financing instrument provided by the IMF).

Main Questions:

Against this background, and since every crisis brings opportunities, the conference, through plenary sessions and panels, will feature world-renowned economists, social scientists and policymakers in order to discuss the following questions:

1) For how long and how deep the impact of these unprecedented shocks is going to be? What will be the medium and long run effect, especially with regards to SDGs?

2) For the post-COVID19 period, how national policies have to be adjusted in order to re-prioritize development goals and make the economies more resilient in the short term and more developed in the long term? How to manage the tradeoff between deeper stabilization as a short-term requirement with optimum resource allocation as a long-term goal?

3) At the social level, how will the MENA region combine finance stabilization programs that are often accompanied by targeted short-term relief for a few of the vulnerable people with more systemic long-term solutions?, and, in view of the shrinking fiscal space and looming debt burden, how much support could be expected from the regional and international development communities for MENA and other developing regions?

4) The underlying issue to all of the above is what will be the emerging role of the state in response to the changing technological and regulatory capacities that are likely to shape the economic policy making in the aftermath of Covid-19?

Agenda

Plenary 1: A Global Economic System in Turmoil: What is at Stake for the MENA region?

Date

17/05/2021

Location

Online Webinar

Time

From 4:00 pm To 6:00 pm

Register here

While the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a severe economic crisis and recession at the world level, there is a higher-than-usual degree of uncertainty related to recovery. This is particularly more pronounced for the Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) economies that are more dependent on oil exports and have a lower fiscal space. Thus, with decreasing oil prices, these two external shocks are likely to have a deep and long-lasting effect on the MENA countries and will put a halt on their progress in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Therefore, this first plenary session will discuss several questions related to these shocks:

1) First, for how long and how deep the impact of these unprecedented shocks is going to be? What will be the medium and long run effect, especially with regards to SDGs?

2) What are the main challenges faced by the MENA region to move forward despite this uncertainty?

3) How the world will look like in the post-COVID-19 era? What will be the role of MENA region?

Speakers

Senior Associates

Samir Makdisi

Professor Emeritus of Economics, American University of...

Research Fellows

Ibrahim Elbadawi

Managing Director, Economic Research Forum

Senior Associates

Mahmoud Mohieldin

Professor, Department of Economics - Cairo University,...

Speakers

H.E. Hala Elsaid

Minister of Planning and Economic Development

Speakers

Mounir Tabet

Deputy Executive Secretary - Programme, ESCWA

Research Fellows

Kamiar Mohaddes

Macroeconomist, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge

Presentations

A Global Economic System in Turmoil: What is at Stake for the MENA Region?