The thesis focuses on the progress of the oil economies in MENA since 90's. Due to the outbreak of unrest in the Arab world, the thesis deals with the political area and causes leading to the Arab Spring. The importance of oil in the world economy and it's discovery in the Middle East and North Africa increased strategic importance of this region. Arab countries have for the past three decades undergone significant social, economic and political transformation and their oil wealth played a major role in this transformation. The first chapter focuses on economic theory dealing with raw materials and their impact on economic growth of countries. The next chapter focuses on presentation of the MENA region. The third chapter deals with the development of four selected countries - Algeria, Egypt, Syria and Libya since 90's, the impact of the global financial crisis on Arab countries and the Arab Spring.

As of April 2019, there were over 650,000 Syrian refugees residing in Jordan. A combination of economic, social, and moral imperatives related to the Syrian civil war have led to a threefold increase in early marriage rates. Syrian women and girls, particularly those who marry under the age of 18, are at significant risk of sexual and gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy. In this context, emergency contraception could play a significant role in supporting Syrian refugees prevent pregnancy. In 2016-2017 we conducted six focus group discussions with Syrian women and girls. We conducted 100 structured interviews with pharmacists in different areas of the country regarding EC provision practices. We also interviewed 13 key informants about available sexual and reproductive health services, including EC, and conducting six focus group discussions with Syrian child brides. We audio-recorded and translated all discussions from Arabic to English and conducted content and thematic analyses using deductive and inductive techniques. Most women and girls became pregnant during the first six months of their marriage, face pressure to become pregnant repeatedly, and experience or had experienced physical and sexual violence. None of the women knew of EC but all expressed curiosity and excitement about this method of pregnancy prevention. Our findings suggest that Syrian women and girls in early marriages have significant unmet contraceptive needs. Child brides, specifically those under the age of 15, reported rarely using any type of contraception, largely due to familial pressures to prove fertility. As a result of this research we undertook a multipronged initiative to respond to the sexual and reproductive health, as well as psychosocial needs, of Syrian child brides.

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yes / This paper sets out to provide a deeper understanding of the regulatory framework to drive energy transformation processes in the MENA region and the barriers for change. The recent developments in a global scale have encouraged States to look towards alternative sources of energy to power their nation, with nuclear energy and renewable technologies. Technologies such as wind power and solar energy appear to be attracting interest in many countries and regions, and in the MENA region this is primarily solar energy. However, all States are at different stages of development and therefore, it poses a challenge for taking into consideration definitively the costs and efficiency of renewable energy technologies. This paper investigates the state of preparedness of the legal framework in the region in order to deploy renewable sources of energy to power these countries in years to come.

Yes / This article provides an overview of the current stage of development as well as the outlook for future cooperation in the field of renewable energy between the European Union and the countries of Middle East and North Africa (MENA). To continue with the progress achieved in the context of the Mediterranean Solar Plan the MENA region should adopt a regionally coordinated approach due to the absence of an established institutional and regulatory framework for trans-regional cooperation. While several studies have highlighted the competitiveness of electricity produced from renewable energy sources in MENA, governments and policy makers in the region should carefully assess their ability to ensure a sustainable policy framework for the renewables sector and opportunities for trans-regional exchanges of electricity. This article proposes that in order to address governance issues and facilitate the creation of a regional energy market, MENA countries may need to adopt an intergovernmental instrument such as the Energy Charter Treaty or the International Energy Charter.

Yes / This paper undertakes a comparison between five multifactor variants of the capital asset pricing model. These include additional factors based on size, book to market value, momentum, liquidity and a new investor protection metric based on the product of institutional quality in a country and the proportion of free float shares, which captures the impact of controlling block holders. Using monthly returns of 909 blue chip firms from 18 Middle East & North African equity markets for 16 years, we show that a two factor CAPM augmented with a factor mimicking portfolio based on the investor protection metric yields the highest explanatory power. Analysis of Kalman filter time varying investor protection betas reveals investor protection premiums in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Tunisia and corresponding discounts in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Dust-climate interaction over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has long been studied, as it is the "dustiest" region on earth. However, the quantitative and qualitative understanding of the role of dust direct radiative effect on MENA climate is still rudimentary. The present dissertation investigates dust direct radiative effect on MENA climate during summer with a special emphasis on the sensitivity of climate response to dust shortwave absorption, which is one of the most uncertain components of dust direct radiative effect. Simulations are conducted with and without dust radiative effect, to differentiate the effect of dust on climate. To elucidate the sensitivity of climate response to dust shortwave absorption, simulations with dust assume three different cases of dust shortwave absorption, representing dust as a very efficient, standard and inefficient shortwave absorber. The non-uniformly distributed dust perturb circulations at various scales. Therefore, the present study takes advantage of the high spatial resolution capabilities of an Atmospheric General Circulation Model (AGCM), High Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM), which incorporates global and regional circulations. AMIP-style global high-resolution simulations are conducted at a spatial resolution of 25 km. A significant response in the strength and position of the local Hadley circulation is predicted in response to meridionally asymmetric distribution of dust and the corresponding radiative effects. Significant responses are also found in regional circulation features such as African Easterly Jet and West African Monsoon circulation. Consistent with these dynamic responses at various scales, the tropical rainbelt across MENA strengthens and shifts northward. Similarly, the temperature under rainbelt cools and that over subtropical deserts warms. Inter-comparison of various dust shortwave absorption cases shows that the response of the MENA tropical rainbelt is extremely sensitive to the strength of shortwave absorption. Further analyses reveal that the sensitivity of the rainbelt stems from the sensitivity of the multi-scale circulations that define the rainbelt. Importantly, the summer precipitation over the semi-arid strip south of Sahara, including Sahel, increases in response to dust radiative effect. The maximum response and sensitivity are predicted over this region. The sensitivity of the responses over Sahel, especially that of precipitation, is comparable to the mean state. Locally, the precipitation increase reaches up to 50% of the mean, while dust is assumed to be a very efficient absorber. As the region is characterized by the "Sahel drought", the predicted precipitation sensitivity to the dust loading over this region has a wide-range of socioeconomic implications. The present study, therefore, suggests the importance of reducing uncertainty in dust shortwave absorption for a better simulation and interpretation of the MENA climate in general, and of Sahel in particular.

Cette thèse exploite une nouvelle source de données longitudinales sur les niveaux et les conditions de vie des ménages marocains en vue d’éclaircir les liens existants entre santé, protection sociale, et pauvreté, dans le cas du Maroc. Dans un premier temps, nous évaluons l’impact d’un programme national de gratuité des soins sur le recours aux soins et le poids financier des dépenses liées à la santé. En deuxième lieu, nous examinons comment les chocs de santé se répercutent sur la répartition de l’offre de santé au sein du ménage. Enfin, nous analysons les déterminants du sentiment de pauvreté au sein de la population marocaine, avec une attention particulière portée aux effets de comparaison. Les principaux résultats de ce travail sont que le programme de gratuité des soins a eu un impact positif de taille modérée sur l’accès aux soins en milieu rural, mais pas d’effet décelable en milieu urbain, ni sur les dépenses de santé. Nous montrons que les ménages marocains utilisent une gamme variée de mécanismes informels pour se protéger contre le risque financier lié à la santé ; en particulier, l’offre de travail féminine en milieu urbain réagit positivement à la maladie du chef de ménage. Enfin, nous trouvons que le sentiment de pauvreté est lié au niveau de vie moyen du groupe de référence du ménage, mais que cet effet varie en fonction de l’échelle géographique de ce groupe : le revenu moyen des voisins proches est lié négativement au sentiment de propre pauvreté, tandis que celui de la province de résidence est lié positivement à la pauvreté subjective. / This dissertation exploits a new nationally representative panel survey of household conditions in order to investigate different aspects of the health-social protection-poverty nexus in present-day Morocco. First, we assess the impact of a policy of `free health care' on access to public hospitals and health-related expenditures. Second, we investigate how shocks related to ill health are related to various coping mechanisms, in particular to the reallocation of labor within the household. Third, we analyze the determinants of the feeling of being poor in the Moroccan population, with a focus on comparison effects. We find that the free health care policy had a moderate, but positive, impact on access to health care among rural households, but a limited impact on health expenditures and no impact on consultation rates for urban household. Moroccan families use a variety of coping mechanisms to cover themselves against the financial shocks linked to illness; in particular, we show that in urban areas, female labor supply reacts positively to illness of the household head, which suggests that low female labor force participation is driven by supply-side reasons. Finally, we find that the feelings of being poor is influenced by the income of various comparison groups, albeit in different directions according to the geographical scale: the income of the comparison group at the neighborhood or village level is negatively associated with the feeling of poverty, while the income at the province level is positively correlated with one's own poverty perception.

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