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The analysis in this paper helps understand the progress in reforms and development of the private sector in the Middle East and North Africa. It shows the critical role played by the State-private sector relations in determining the progress of reforms and their impact on private sector development. The authoritarian nature of the political regimes and the existence of large oil and other rents, and conflict to a much lesser extent, have been the major factors which shaped the nature, extent and speed of reforms.JEL Classification: D78, N45, O43, O53.

It is common to argue that poverty is a multidimensional issue. Yet, few studies have included the various dimensions of deprivation to yield a broader and fuller picture of poverty. The present paper discusses the ethical foundations of the main approaches dealing with multidimensional poverty measures. An illustration of these measures to household data from Egypt and South Africa is proposed using complete and partial bidimensional poverty orderings.JEL classification: D31, D63, I32

Although poverty has been significantly decreasing in China over the last twenty years, this decrease has been highly unequal across the provinces and has brought increased disparity in urban and rural per capita income. We studied the impact of exchange rate policy on urban-rural per capita income, which was marked by strong real depreciation before 1994, followed by moderate appreciation before stabilizing. We concluded that in the inland provinces where poverty is hardest, real appreciation has attenuated disparity, whereas real depreciation had accentuated disparity. This result argues for a revaluation of the renminbi.

This paper analyzes the likely impact of European preferences, in particular of its Rules of Origin (RoO), on the prospects for integration of West Africa in world trade. We show that West African trade has not yet achieved the structural transformation of countries having successfully established themselves as manufacturing assembly platforms. EU RoO are complex, restrictive and discriminatory, hampering this integration of African producers in world trade. The paper explores the consequences of moving to a single product-specific RoO which would allow a maximum foreign content (MFC) to satisfy the substantial transformation criterion. We suggest that the developmental objective of the EPAs would be satisfied with a MFC of 90%-95% for LDCs and a 60%-70% for non-LDCs. Such a differentiated treatment should allow the small african companies in West Africa to enter into cross-border production chains. With such a move, the EU would also “seize the agenda” in the much awaited move towards multilateralization of preferential RoO.