External Shocks in the MENA Region: From Resilience to Change
External Shocks in the MENA Region: From Resilience to Change
ERF 27th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
June, 2021| Exact venue and date to be confirmed
The Economic Research Forum’s (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.
This year the conference is held under the theme of “External Shocks in the MENA Region: from Resilience to Change”. This is a timely topic in the light of the significant political, social and economic transformation in the region.
There will be several main plenary sessions and panels, which will feature world-renowned economists, social scientists and policymakers. The parallel 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. A 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 (GCC) countries, countries with political unrests (Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria, Sudan), countries with internal or external conflicts (Libya, Palestine, Syria and Yemen), and the other middle-income countries (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia). 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) and 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:
- 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?
- 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 compromise more stabilization as a short-term goal with a better allocation as a long-term one?
- 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?
ERF invites submissions from interested researchers on any topic within the area of Development Economics or related fields. Submissions, in accordance with standard ERF guidelines, could be in the form of individual papers or panel proposals.