IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp7573.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Making Sense of Arab Labor Markets: The Enduring Legacy of Dualism

Author

Listed:
  • Assaad, Ragui

    (University of Minnesota)

Abstract

It is well-established that Arab labor markets share certain common characteristics, including an oversized public sector, high unemployment for educated youth, weak private sector dependent on government welfare for their survival, rapid growth in educational attainment, but much of it focused on the pursuit of formal credentials rather than productive skills, and low and stagnant female labor force participation rates. I argue in this paper that all of these features can be explained by the deep and persistent dualism that characterizes Arab labor markets as a result of the use of labor markets by Arab regimes as tool of political appeasement in the context of the "authoritarian bargain" social contract that they have struck with their citizens in the post-independence period. Even as fiscal crises have long destabilized these arrangements in most non-oil Arab countries, culminating in the dramatic political upheavals of the Arab spring revolutions, the enduring legacy of dualism will continue to strongly shape the production and deployment of human capital in Arab economies for some time. This will undoubtedly pose serious challenges to any efforts to transform these economies into dynamic, rapidly growing and more equitable globally competitive economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Assaad, Ragui, 2013. "Making Sense of Arab Labor Markets: The Enduring Legacy of Dualism," IZA Discussion Papers 7573, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7573
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp7573.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Djavad Salehi-Isfahani & Nadia Belhaj Hassine, 2012. "Equality of Opportunity in Education in the Middle East and North Africa," Working Papers e07-33, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Economics.
    2. Robinson, James A. & Torvik, Ragnar & Verdier, Thierry, 2006. "Political foundations of the resource curse," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 447-468, April.
    3. Baldwin-Edwards, Martin, 2011. "Labour immigration and labour markets in the GCC countries: national patterns and trends," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 55239, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Assaad, Ragui, 1999. "Matching Severance Payments with Worker Losses in the Egyptian Public Sector," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 13(1), pages 117-153, January.
    5. Ghazal Bayanpourtehrani & Kevin Sylwester, 2013. "Female Labour Force Participation And Religion: A Cross-Country Analysis," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 107-133, April.
    6. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    7. Lowi,Miriam R., 2009. "Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521113182.
    8. Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, 2012. "Education, Jobs, and Equity in the Middle East and North Africa," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 54(4), pages 843-861, December.
    9. Harris, John R & Todaro, Michael P, 1970. "Migration, Unemployment & Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 126-142, March.
    10. World Bank, 2004. "Gender and Development in the Middle East and North Africa : Women in the Public Sphere," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15036.
    11. Omer Ali & Ibrahim Elbadawi, 2012. "The Political Economy of Public Sector Employment in Resource Dependent Countries," Working Papers 673, Economic Research Forum, revised 2012.
    12. repec:wbk:wbpubs:12550 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Filipe R. Campante & Davin Chor, 2012. "Why Was the Arab World Poised for Revolution? Schooling, Economic Opportunities, and the Arab Spring," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 167-188, Spring.
    14. World Bank, 2004. "Unlocking the Employment Potential in the Middle East and North Africa : Toward a New Social Contract," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15011.
    15. Assaad, Ragui, 1997. "The Effects of Public Sector Hiring and Compensation Policies on the Egyptian Labor Market," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 11(1), pages 85-118, January.
    16. Amin, Magdi & Assaad, Ragui & al-Baharna, Nazar & Dervis, Kemal & Desai, Raj M. & Dhillon, Navtej S. & Galal, Ahmed & Ghanem, Hafez & Graham, Carol & Kaufmann, Daniel, 2012. "After the Spring: Economic Transitions in the Arab World," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199924929, December.
    17. World Bank, 2013. "Opening Doors : Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North Africa," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 12552.
    18. Niels Spierings & Jeroen Smits & Mieke Verloo, 2009. "On the Compatibility of Islam and Gender Equality," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 503-522, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Djavad Salehi-Isfahani & Nadia Hassine & Ragui Assaad, 2014. "Equality of opportunity in educational achievement in the Middle East and North Africa," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(4), pages 489-515, December.
    2. Rougier, Eric, 2016. "“Fire in Cairo”: Authoritarian–Redistributive Social Contracts, Structural Change, and the Arab Spring," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 148-171.
    3. Assaad, Ragui & Hendy, Rana & Salehi-Isfahani, Djavad, 2019. "Inequality of opportunity in educational attainment in the Middle East and North Africa: Evidence from household surveys," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 24-43.
    4. Tansel, Aysit & Keskin, Halil Ibrahim & Ozdemir, Zeynel Abidin, 2020. "Public-private sector wage gap by gender in Egypt: Evidence from quantile regression on panel data, 1998–2018," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    5. Caroline Krafft & Ragui Assaad, 2020. "Employment’s Role in Enabling and Constraining Marriage in the Middle East and North Africa," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(6), pages 2297-2325, December.
    6. Binzel, Christine & Assaad, Ragui, 2011. "Egyptian men working abroad: Labour supply responses by the women left behind," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(S1), pages 98-114.
    7. Tarik M. Yousef, 2004. "Development, Growth and Policy Reform in the Middle East and North Africa since 1950," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 91-115, Summer.
    8. Agenor, Pierre-Richard & Nabli, Mustapha K. & Yousef, Tarik & Jensen, Henning Tarp, 2007. "Labor market reforms, growth, and unemployment in labor-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 277-309.
    9. Pierre‐Richard Agénor & Kamer K. Ozdemir & Emmanuel Pinto Moreira, 2021. "Gender Gaps in the Labour Market and Economic Growth," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(350), pages 235-270, April.
    10. Ragui Assaad & Rana Hendy & Moundir Lassassi & Shaimaa Yassin, 2020. "Explaining the MENA paradox: Rising educational attainment yet stagnant female labor force participation," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 43(28), pages 817-850.
    11. Melani Cammett & Ishac Diwan & Andrew Leber, 2019. "Is Oil Wealth Good for Private Sector Development?," Working Papers 1299, Economic Research Forum, revised 2019.
    12. Ragui Assaad & Ghada Barsoum, 2019. "Public employment in the Middle East and North Africa," IZA World of Labor, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), pages 463-463, August.
    13. Caroline Krafft, 2020. "Why is fertility on the rise in Egypt? The role of women’s employment opportunities," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1173-1218, October.
    14. Ragui Assaad & Caroline Krafft & John Roemer & Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, 2016. "Inequality of Opportunity in Income and Consumption: the Middle East and North Africa Region in Comparative Perspective," Working Papers 1003, Economic Research Forum, revised May 2016.
    15. Efstratia Arampatzi & Martijn Burger & Elena Ianchovichina & Tina Röhricht & Ruut Veenhoven, 2018. "Unhappy Development: Dissatisfaction With Life on the Eve of the Arab Spring," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(s1), pages 80-113, October.
    16. Mona Said & Fatma El-Hamidi, 2008. "Taking Technical Education Seriously in MENA: Determinants, Labor Market Implications and Policy Lessons," Working Papers 450, Economic Research Forum, revised 09 Jan 2008.
    17. Christopoulos, Dimitris K. & McAdam, Peter, 2019. "Efficiency, Inefficiency, And The Mena Frontier," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 489-521, March.
    18. Pedro Gomes & Zoe Kuehn, 2017. "Human capital and the size distribution of firms," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 26, pages 164-179, October.
    19. Campante, Filipe R. & Chor, Davin, 2014. "“The people want the fall of the regime”: Schooling, political protest, and the economy," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 495-517.
    20. Mahdi Majbouri, 2019. "Twins, family size and female labour force participation in Iran," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 387-397, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    education; unemployment; Arab Spring; labor market dualism; authoritarian bargain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East
    • P52 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Comparative Economic Systems - - - Comparative Studies of Particular Economies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7573. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.