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ERF 32nd Annual Conference: After the Shock – Reform, Resilience, and Economic Transformation in MENA

FromJun 14, 2026 To Jun 16, 2026

Cairo, Egypt

Conference Overview

The MENA region is entering a new economic phase shaped not by isolated shocks, but by sustained geopolitical disruption, heightened uncertainty, and increasingly complex channels of economic transmission. The recent conflict involving Iran, the United States, and regional actors has exposed structural vulnerabilities across trade systems, financial channels, labour markets, public finances, firms, and households.

This is not simply a crisis to be managed. It is a systemic stress test. It has shown how rapidly disruptions in security, trade routes, energy markets, shipping, insurance, finance, and investor confidence can spread through economies and affect employment, prices, public budgets, investment, and livelihoods.

Against this backdrop, the policy challenge extends beyond restoring growth. The region must strengthen resilience, improve the speed and credibility of policy response, protect vulnerable groups, and advance reforms that support more productive, inclusive, and sustainable economic models.

The Economic Research Forum’s 32nd Annual Conference will bring together researchers, policymakers, private sector leaders, and development practitioners to examine this changing landscape and identify the evidence, reforms, and strategies required for MENA’s next phase of development.

Building on ERF’s strong regional research network and policy-oriented mandate, the conference will facilitate a dialogue that moves beyond diagnosis toward actionable reform pathways. It will provide a platform for rigorous research, comparative evidence, and policy debate on how MENA economies can navigate ongoing disruption and position themselves for a more resilient and sustainable future.

The three-day programme will feature three plenary sessions, three policy roundtables, and more than 60 competitively selected papers over 20 thematic sessions. Together, they will address the region’s most pressing economic challenges, advance the discussion from crisis management to longer-term reform and renewal, and strengthen the evidence base for policy action.

Conference Focus

The conference will explore five interrelated dimensions of post-crisis reform and economic transformation in MENA:

  • Shock transmission and systemic vulnerability: how disruptions spread across trade, finance, firms, employment, public finances, and households;
  • Economic resilience: how fiscal, financial, institutional, and social systems can better absorb and respond to stress;
  • Policy and institutional reform: how frameworks can be redesigned to improve coordination, credibility, agility, and effectiveness;
  • Private sector adaptation: how firms can continue to operate, invest, and create jobs in a more uncertain environment;
  • Inclusive transformation: how growth models must evolve to protect vulnerable groups, expand opportunity, and strengthen social cohesion.
  • Through these themes, the conference will draw lessons from the current crisis, showcase research findings, and advance the discussion from short-term crisis management toward longer-term reform, resilience, and economic transformation.

Plenary Sessions

  • Plenary 1: The War and the Region: Economic Damage, Policy Choices, and the Risk of Scarring
  • Plenary 2: Reform Under Constraint: Fiscal Space, Private Investment, and the New Growth Bargain
  • Plenary 3: Protecting People in the Shock Economy: Jobs, Informality, Youth, Women, and Displaced Populations

Featured Policy Roundtables

  • Featured Policy Roundtable 1: Extending Social Protection Systems in MENA to Informal Workers and their Families
  • Featured Policy Roundtable 2: Unlocking Evidence for Jobs and Inclusion: Launch of the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey
  • Featured Policy Roundtable 3: A New Pathway for Egypt

Parallel Sessions

The conference will also feature more than 60 competitively selected papers presented across over 20 thematic sessions. These sessions will cover the most pressing and emerging economic challenges facing the MENA region, including macroeconomic adjustment, fiscal policy, labour markets, social protection, trade, firms, informality, migration, poverty, inequality, climate, governance, and structural transformation.

The parallel sessions are central to the conference. They will provide the main platform for new research, empirical findings, methodological advances, and country-level evidence. They will also complement the plenary discussions by bringing forward research that can inform policy choices and strengthen the evidence base for reform across the region.

Closing Plenary Session

The conference will conclude with the ERF Best Paper Award Ceremony, in keeping with ERF’s longstanding tradition and commitment to research excellence.

The closing session will reflect on the main messages emerging from the conference: the economic consequences of the current shock, the reforms needed to strengthen resilience and growth, and the importance of placing people, especially vulnerable groups, at the centre of the region’s research and policy agenda.