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...

Demographic change exerts pressure on labour markets and public finances across the globe. Most studies on ageing focus on the projected development of the old age dependency ratio, the ratio of persons 65 or older relative to the working age population. This ratio gives a very incomplete...

This report describes the macro-econometric model for the Republic of Macedonia MAKMODEL. It documents the main features of this model that was built by research teams of the Macedonian and Dutch central bank during July 1999 - June 2001 as one module of a large scale PHARE-project, funded by...

Wage coordination between countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU) aims at aligning nominal wage growth with labour productivity growth at the national level. We analyse the developments in Germany, the EMU's periphery countries Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain along with the United...

This report describes the macro-econometric model for the Republic of Macedonia MAKMODEL. It documents the main features of this model that was built by research teams of the Macedonian and Dutch central bank during July 1999 - June 2001 as one module of a large scale PHARE-project, funded by...

Due to its pyramid population structure, Egypt needs to create jobs at a high pace to absorb the many new entrants at its labour market. This article structurally models and quantifies the impact of these demographic shocks and the shedding of public sector jobs on unemployment. The findings...

This paper investigates the fiscal pressure from demographic change in relation to the labour marketspace for fifty countries that cover 75% of the world population. The pressure-to-space indicator ranks Poland, Turkey and Greece high. Apart from Turkey and India, developing countries rank low...