ERF 32nd Annual Conference: After the Shock – Reform, Resilience, and Economic Transformation in MENA
FromJun 14, 2026 To Jun 16, 2026
Cairo, Egypt
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. Recent regional conflict and heightened geopolitical tensions have 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, two featured policy roundtables, and 85 competitively selected papers across 30 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.
Agenda
Plenary 1: The War and the Region: Economic Damage, Policy Choices, and the Risk of Scarring
Date
14/06/2026
Location
Hybrid Event
Time
From 9:00 am To 11:00 am
This opening plenary will take stock of the economic impact of recent regional conflict and related geopolitical disruption on MENA economies. It will examine how the shock has been transmitted through trade routes, energy and food prices, shipping and insurance costs, financial conditions, tourism, investment, public finances, firms, and labour markets.
The purpose of the session is not only to describe the damage, but to assess where the region now stands and what policy responses are required. The discussion will distinguish between short-term disruption and the risk of longer-term economic scarring, including delayed investment, firm closures, fiscal stress, weakened employment creation, and deeper social vulnerability.
The session will also ask which policy instruments have worked, which have been insufficient, and where governments need to act with greater speed, coordination, and credibility. It will consider how countries with different fiscal buffers, external positions, institutional capacities, and exposure to conflict have experienced the shock differently, and what this implies for the design of policy responses across the region.
Questions for Discussion
- Through which channels has the war affected MENA economies most severely?
- Which countries, sectors, firms, and workers have proved more resilient, and why?
- Where is the risk of lasting economic scarring greatest?
- What immediate policy responses are needed to protect macroeconomic stability, firms, jobs, and vulnerable households?
- How should governments balance crisis response with the need to preserve reform momentum?
- What lessons should be drawn for future crisis preparedness in the region?
Speakers
Research Fellows
Ahmed Galal
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Economic...
Senior Associates
H.E. Hala Elsaid
Economic Advisor to H.E. President of Egypt...
Research Fellows
Raed Safadi
Managing Director Designate, ERF
Research Fellows
Rania Al-Mashat
UN Under-Secretary-General & Executive Secretary of Economic...
Speakers
Jihad Azour
Director of the Middle East and Central...
Research Fellows
Nasser Saidi
President, Nasser Saidi & Associates
Featured Policy Roundtable 1: Extending Social Protection Systems in MENA to Informal Workers and their Families
Date
14/06/2026
Location
Hybrid Event
Time
From 4:00 pm To 5:30 pm
Theme: How can informal workers be effectively integrated into national social and health protection systems?
In MENA, social protection remains fragmented, with contributory schemes largely limited to formal workers. As a result, many informal workers, who account for a large share of the labour force, remain excluded from effective coverage. Social assistance often reaches only the poorest households, leaving many vulnerable workers and families exposed to income shocks, health risks, and old-age insecurity.
This roundtable will examine the policy gaps and emerging models for extending social and health protection to informal workers and their families. It will focus on the legal, administrative, financial, and institutional barriers that prevent inclusion, and will draw on ERF research and country experiences from Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and potentially Lebanon.
The discussion will assess the effectiveness and scalability of different approaches, including subsidised contributions, simplified enrolment, digital identification, links between social assistance and insurance, and mechanisms to reach workers outside standard employment relationships. The session will be grounded in both empirical evidence and policy practice.
Speakers
Research Fellows
Ragui Assaad
Professor and Freeman Chair for International Economic...
Speakers
Nesreen Barakat
CEO, Jordan Strategy Forum
Research Fellows
Irène Selwaness
Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics and Political...
Research Associates
Khaled Nasri
Assistant Professor, Applied Statistics and Econometrics, Higher...
Speakers
Camille Laporte
Deputy Director, Research Department, Agence Française de...
Agenda
Plenary 2: Reform Under Constraint: Fiscal Space, Private Investment, and the New Growth Bargain
Date
15/06/2026
Location
Hybrid Event
Time
From 9:00 am To 10:30 am
This plenary will examine how MENA economies can sustain reform when public finances are under pressure, borrowing costs remain high, and private investment is not yet strong enough to drive broad-based growth. The central issue is that countries in the region are being asked to stabilise, protect, reform, and invest at the same time, often with limited fiscal space and constrained institutional capacity.
The session will focus on the economic bargain now facing the region. Governments must preserve macroeconomic stability and social cohesion, but they must also create the conditions for investment, productivity, job creation, and structural transformation. This requires clearer prioritisation, stronger policy credibility, and better alignment between fiscal policy, financial systems, competition, industrial policy, and labour-market reform.
The discussion will also consider the evolving role of the state: not as a substitute for markets, but as a credible reformer, risk manager, regulator, and enabler of private investment. Particular attention will be given to SMEs, infrastructure, human capital, and sectors where the region can build competitiveness in a more fragmented and risk-aware global economy.
Questions for Discussion
- How can MENA governments pursue reform when fiscal space is limited and financing costs remain high?
- What should be protected, what should be reprioritised, and what can no longer be postponed?
- How can public policy crowd in private investment rather than crowd it out?
- What reforms are most urgent for productivity, competitiveness, and job creation?
- How can financial systems support firms, especially SMEs, during periods of uncertainty?
- What does a credible new growth bargain between the state, firms, and citizens look like in the region?
Speakers
Research Fellows
Tarik Yousef
Senior Fellow, Middle East Council on Global...
Senior Associates
Adeel Malik
Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim...
Research Fellows
Ishac Diwan
Professor of Practice in Economics, American University...
Speakers
Amir Lebdioui
Associate Professor of the Political Economy of...
Speakers
Nur Arafeh
Fellow, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East...
Featured Policy Roundtable 2: Unlocking Evidence for Jobs and Inclusion: Launch of the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey
Date
15/06/2026
Location
Hybrid Event
Time
From 4:00 pm To 5:30 pm
This high-profile roundtable will mark the launch of the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey and highlight its relevance for employment and inclusion policy. The session will consider how improved labour-market data can strengthen policy design, deepen understanding of labour-market dynamics, and support more effective strategies for job creation, inclusion, and social mobility in Jordan and the wider region.
The discussion will place particular emphasis on how panel data can help researchers and policymakers understand transitions between education, employment, unemployment, informality, migration, and household vulnerability. It will also examine how better data can improve the targeting and evaluation of labour-market programmes, social protection reforms, and policies aimed at women and youth.
Speakers
Research Fellows
Ragui Assaad
Professor and Freeman Chair for International Economic...
Research Fellows
May Gadallah
Associate Professor, Departments of Statistics, Cairo University
Authors
Ibrahim Al Hawarin
Associate Professor, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University
Policy Affiliates
Mary Kawar
Former Minister of Planning and International Cooperation,...
Agenda
Plenary 3: Protecting People in the Shock Economy: Jobs, Informality, and Vulnerable Groups
Date
16/06/2026
Location
Hybrid Event
Time
From 9:00 am To 10:30 am
This plenary will focus on the groups most exposed to economic shocks and least protected by existing systems. In the MENA region, crises do not affect all people equally. Young people, women, informal workers, low-income households, refugees, displaced populations, and workers in fragile sectors often absorb the largest costs through job losses, lower earnings, interrupted education, reduced mobility, and weaker access to services.
The session will examine how the war and broader economic disruption have affected employment, livelihoods, social protection, and human capital. It will also consider the structural reasons why vulnerability remains so persistent in the region, including informality, fragmented social insurance systems, weak labour-market intermediation, gender barriers, spatial inequalities, and limited pathways from education to decent work.
The discussion will move beyond protection as emergency relief. It will ask how MENA countries can build systems that protect people before shocks become social crises, while also enabling participation, mobility, and productivity. This includes better labour-market data, more inclusive social protection, active labour-market policies, skills systems, and targeted support for groups at risk of exclusion.
Questions for Discussion
- Which groups have been most affected by the current crisis, and through which channels?
- How have labour markets transmitted the shock to workers, households, youth, women, and informal workers?
- Why do existing social protection systems still leave many vulnerable groups exposed?
- How can countries extend protection without creating unsustainable fiscal burdens?
What policies can help vulnerable groups move from protection to participation? - How should ERF’s research agenda better capture vulnerability, informality, displacement, and exclusion in the region?
Speakers
Research Fellows
Raed Safadi
Managing Director Designate, ERF
Senior Associates
Mahmoud Mohieldin
Professor of Economics and Finance, Cairo University,...
Speakers
Roberta V. Gatti
Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa,...
Speakers
Hamza Meddeb
Research Fellow, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle...
Policy Affiliates
Mary Kawar
Former Minister of Planning and International Cooperation,...