Volume 14, Issue 1 -

The purpose of this article is identify and explain gender differences in eight important socioeconomic attitudes and political priorities among randomized samples of both males and females in 21 countries of the broadly defined Middle East. The attitudes and political priorities examined include the low status of women, lack of democracy, absence of a competitive private sector, income inequality and reliance on the military. In each case decomposition methods are used to divide these differences into those due to differences in the underlying characteristics of males and females and those due to differences in the effect of those characteristics

This paper examines the link between financing constraints and firm exporting behavior through an in-depth study of the Turkish manufacturing firms between 1996 and 2013. Utilizing a rich firm-level data set, we test for both ex-ante and ex-post links between exports and financing constraints to tackle potential selection biases and endogeneity problems. We find a positive and statistically significant export premium for financing constraints in general. In further testing we show that there is no significant evidence of pre-entry premium, while we find that financing constraints faced by exporting firms are eased once they start exporting, confirming an improvement in the financial conditions of export starters compared to non-exporters.

This research detects the existence of monetary policy transmission mechanisms in Lebanon through which the actions of the central bank propagate. By adopting co-integration analysis and VECM frameworks, and by exploiting monthly data between January 1994 and December 2016, the research revealed the existence of a long-run interest rate channel, affecting both resident private sector deposits and credit to the private sector. Another short-run capital channel was revealed, affecting total credit provided by the banking sector. Additionally, the empirical results show that (1) deposit inflows are not attracted by high interest rates, but stimulated by confidence provided by large foreign currency reserves held by the central banks; (2) non-residents deposit inflows could represent a substitute for local credit; (3) banks pass-through any increase in funding cost to borrowers; and (4) an increase in external interest rates may trigger deposit outflows.

This study investigates macroeconomic determinants of import flow and explores potential import markets for Bahrain using an augmented gravity model on panel data of 42 trading partners, from 2000 to 2016. The result of panel generalized least square estimation technique shows that the core variables support the theory of the basic gravity model. The estimated results of the augmented variables show that the imports of Bahrain are more responsive to income of trading partners, gross domestic product, and export flow; whereas, negatively determined by the relative price. The findings of dummy variables show that there is a significant role of common language and Gulf economic integration on imports of Bahrain. The results of the import potential analysis show that Bahrain has exceeded its import potential from most of its Asian trading partners; however, positive import potential exists in Africa and America and some selected Middle Eastern and European markets.