Publications

Using a sample of publicly listed banks from 62 developed and developing, including MENA, countries over the 1991-2017 period, we investigate the impact of capital on banks’ cost of equity. We report the highest median cost of equity in Lebanon with 25.1%. Consistent with the theoretical prediction that more equity in the capital mix leads to a fall in firms’ costs of equity, we find that better capitalised banks enjoy lower equity costs. Our baseline estimations indicate that a 1 percentage point increase in a bank’s equity-to-assets ratio lowers its cost of equity by about 18 basis points. Our results also suggest that the form of capital that investors value the most is sheer equity capital; other forms of capital, such as Tier 2 regulatory capital, are less (or not at all) valued by investors. Additionally, our main finding that capital has a negative effect on banks’ cost of equity holds in both developed and developing countries. The results of this paper provide the missing evidence in the debate on the effects of higher capital requirements on banks’ funding costs.

Amidst the disrupting circumstances resulting from the global pandemic COVID-19, this new study provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Mediterranean and Africa, policy and economic responses to curb it and to alleviate the socio-economic negative consequences.

Lead author of the study is the President of EMEA and Director of EMNES, Prof Rym Ayadi, with contributions from EMEA researchers Giovanni Barci and Sara Ronco.

The study provides the description of the EMEA COVID-19 Monitor Platform and the main findings from the monitoring implemented from the beginning of the pandemic till 24 September 2020.

The Platform is composed of different sections, following the three pillars proposed by EMEA in its first study on COVID-19 (Ayadi et al., 2020). After several months of observations, the study provides a preliminary assessment of the COVID-19 evolution, containment and de-containment measures and the socio-economic preparedness and policies adopted to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. The study is part of the EMEA policy research initiative on COVID-19 launched on March 18th, 2020.  The initiative provides up-to-date research on COVID-19 related topics, publishes studies, data and policy papers and organizes webinars to discuss the outcomes. It is led and coordinated by Prof. Rym Ayadi, President of EMEA and Director of EMNES.

Since events surrounding COVID-19 are unfolding at the time of writing, EMEA research team and EMNES researchers and fellows continue updating the data, policy developments and the economic and social consequences of the pandemic throughout the Mediterranean and Africa.

The updates are posted regularly on the EMEA platform.

EMEA COVID-19 Tracker: https://research.euromed-economists.org/covid-19/

The Tracker collects automatically daily data from international institutions (e.g. WHO, OECD, IMF..) on the COVID-19 pandemic via a built-in algorithm.

EMEA COVID-19 Monitor: https://research.euromed-economists.org/introduction/

The Monitor provides weekly assessments of the COVID-19 evolutions and EMEA analysis on the topic.

The Economic Complexity (EC) approach (Hidalgo and Hausmann 2009) offers a path-breaking perspective into the study of economic development, by introducing new tools for economic analysis, such as the product space and sophistication indexes. A different strand of international economics literature has studied Global Value Chains (GVCs), highlighting their impact on countries the economic performance of countries. This paper jointly considers these two strands of literature by: i) providing a descriptive analysis on a set of selected chains through updated measures of the product space and of derived indexes; ii) proposing a new EC coherent GVC participation index; iii) applying the former contributions to the analysis of North African countries’ GVC performance. From the latter analysis, strong differences between Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco emerge, as far as both current participation and future perspectives are concerned. Overall, the paper, by merging the two strands of literature, for the first time to our knowledge, highlights interesting opportunities for further developments in this direction.