The volatility of exchange rates leads to a reduction of international trade volumes, especially in emerging economies including the South Mediterranean countries. This study discusses the impact of exchange rates on bilateral South- North trade flows, which comes timely after the increased...

In light of the unprecedented developments in the financial sectors of developed economies in the years 2008-2009 and in view of the current political Arab upheaval, this paper reviews the pros and cons of financial integration of the South-Mediterranean region. Our analyses includes Morocco,...

Soaring food and energy prices sparked the revolts in Northern African countries at the end of 2010. Despite government subsidies, consumer price inflation rose, which reduced consumers’ purchasing power. This article empirically investigates the impact of world food prices on inflation and...

According to the life-cycle theory, countries with high and rising youth ratios or high and rising old-age ratios tend to have low savings relative to investment, which depresses their capital outflows. This paper puts life-cycle theory to the test and studies the impact of demographic change on...

Several recent studies have shown that uncertainty affects investment decisions. Specifically, demand and/or price uncertainty are found to depress corporate investment in e.g. the United States. This paper investigates whether similar results hold for Belgium and Spain, countries where...

In the countries of the European economic and monetary union euro banknotes and coins will be put into circulation from January 1, 2002. Seven new banknotes will be issued and eight new coins. Each member country is responsible for the production and distribution of its domestic euro...

During the past decade the Gulf cooperation council countries have achieved a remarkably high degree of trade and financial integration in the world economy. Before the global crisis began, they invested their abundant oil income which resulted from high energy prices and high world demand, in...

The aim of this study is to analyse the price developments and to compare national macroeconomic policies in response to the consumer prices that started to soar in 2007 across the European Neighbourhood Policy countries, the other arcelona countries2, Russia, the Gulf Cooperation Council...

Although the global financial and economic crisis hurt economies worldwide, the economies at the southern Mediterranean region have done relatively well to weather this global hurricane. Economic growth in the region has slowed down but the size of the trough of these economies' business cycle...

Lucas' (1967) adjustment costs model and Kydland and Prescott's (1982) time-to-build model induce mutually exclusive time-series properties that can be recovered from data. This paper investigates three variants of a theoretical model which give insight into the parameter restrictions implied by...