This Policy Brief attempts to draw lessons from the combination of the global financial crisis and the Arab uprisings focusing on the domains related to fiscal, monetary and financial policies. It does so by answering the following questions: What has been the impact of the crisis and the...

CEPS and the International Observatory on Financial Services Cooperatives (IOFSC) at HEC Montreal have initiated an annual monitoring exercise on banking business models in the EU. Based on their balance sheet structures, 147 European banks that account for more than 80% of the industry assets...

The upheavals of the Arab Spring in the southern Mediterranean led to domestic and international demands on the governments in the region to implement reforms aimed at enhancing business and investment conditions especially for micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which carry out...

The Arab Spring, which took root in Tunisia and Egypt in the beginning of 2011 and gradually spread to other countries in the southern Mediterranean, highlighted the importance of private-sector development, job creation, improved governance and a fairer distribution of economic opportunities....

This paper aims at devising scenarios for the development of the financial system in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs), for the 2030 horizon. The results of the simulations indicate that bank credit to the private sector, meta-efficiency and stock market turnover could...

This MEDPRO Technical Report explores the relationship between financial sector development and economic growth, using a sample of northern and southern Mediterranean countries for the years 1985-2009. The authors included several variables to measure the development of the financial sector to...

Casual observation shows that that the financial systems in the southern and eastern Mediterranean are unable (or unwilling) to divert the financial resources that are available to them as funding opportunities to private enterprises. Using a sample of northern and southern Mediterranean...

This analysis of regulatory convergence shows that substantial improvements have been made in the southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs), yet they still suffer from key weaknesses in deposit insurance, entry obstacles, political interference and the strength of legal rights. In...

The contributors – top international scholars from finance, law and business – explore the role of governance, both internal and external, in explaining risk-taking and other aspects of the behavior of financial institutions. Additionally, they discuss market and policy features...

This study offers an in-depth economic analysis of the two main proposals for the creation of a European unemployment insurance scheme. One proposes the creation of a harmonised European unemployment benefit scheme that would apply automatically to every eligible unemployed person. The...