Miquel Pellicer

Is There Strength in Numbers

Studies of the Middle East and North Africa have very often relied on qualitative methodologies to understand and explain the politics of the region. In fact it could be argued that Middle East specialists have tended to shy away purposefully from engaging with quantitative methods because of the perceived ‘exceptionalism’ of the region in terms of the gathering and reliability of hard data. This article makes the case for increasing engagement with quantitative methodologies in order for studies on the Middle East to better speak to comparative politics more broadly. Far from downplaying the significance and contribution of qualitative methods, this article encourages scholars to integrate them with quantitative methods that have been more recently developed to provide a fuller picture of politics in the region.

Education and allocation of skills in Tunisia: evidence from an education reform

AbstractAn often cited explanation for the weak growth effects of education in developing countries is the misallocation of educated workers to inefficient activities in the public sector. This paper assesses the strength of this argument by studying the effect of educational attainment on employment status of Tunisian men. We exploit policy changes that restricted access to secondary education in the 1970’s as an instrument for education and use data from 2004 Tunisian census as well as 2010 Labor Force Survey to estimate the effect of education on working in different sectors and within specific occupational categories. Consistently with the misallocation argument, we find that education increases employment, but that this increase is concentrated either in relatively low skill white collar occupations or in the public sector. Given that our instrument probably affected the academically weaker students this pattern of results suggests that the public sector might inefficiently reward titles.

The Justice and Development Party in Moroccan Local Politics

This article analyzes the performance of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) in Moroccan local politics from 2003 to 2009, using a variety of data sources including interviews, municipal budgets, and audit reports. We find that the PJD’s campaign and candidates were significantly different from Moroccan political norms. The outcomes of audits and budget patterns show governance in towns where the PJD was elected differed only in those where the party had high electoral support in 2003, allowing it to govern with a small coalition.