On the Number of Social Reforms in MENA Economies

Christophe Muller and Klarizze Anne Martin Puzon
Additional contact information
Klarizze Anne Martin Puzon: GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: By constructing a novel measure on the frequency of changes in social protection policies, we provide preliminary, yet new evidence on the determinants of social security reforms in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. This fills a gap in literature where analyses of MENA social policies have been lacking due to limited data. Using panel data for seventeen countries from 1961 to 2015, we estimate RE Poisson regression models. Our results indicate that growth in national income and the frequency of social reform in MENA countries are related, first positively for low growth rates, then negatively for high growth rates. This finding is completed by the negative effects of oil production and of the population size on the number of social reforms. Among the avenues of interpretation we examined - investment model, social objectives pursued by the government, and socio-political equilibrium - this is the first one which seems to be better able to fit our results, accompanied by political disturbances.

Keywords: social protection; welfare programs; Middle-East and North-Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01341184v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01341184v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Number of Social Reforms in MENA Economies (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01341184

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().