Nasri Harb

Financial development and economic growth in the Middle East

This paper investigates the linkages between financial development and economic growth in the Middle East using newly developed methods of panel cointegration along with the popular time series methodologies such as the Johansens cointegration, Granger causality, and the variance decompositions. The results indicate that, in the long run financial development and economic growth may be related to some level. In the short run, the panel causality tests point to real economic growth as the force that drives changes in financial development while individual countries’ causality tests fail to give a clear evidence of the direction of causations.

Money Demand Function: A heterogeneous Panel Application

An aggregate data panel is constructed for the GCCs six countries and the cointegration hypothesis among the variables of the money demand function is verified using Pedronis heterogeneous panel cointegration tests. The idiosyncratic, panel and group-mean cointegrating vectors are then estimated using FMOLS and a modified version of FMOLS developed by Pedroni. The idiosyncratic elasticities have the expected signs in general but are significant only in the case of the scale variable. However, when the power of the test is increased, and allowance made for heterogeneous cointegrating vectors, the group-mean estimator shows a significant negative semi-elasticity of money demand with respect to interest rate.An aggregate data panel is constructed for the GCCs six countries and the cointegration hypothesis among the variables of the money demand function is verified using Pedronis heterogeneous panel cointegration tests. The idiosyncratic, panel and group-mean cointegrating vectors are then estimated using FMOLS and a modified version of FMOLS developed by Pedroni. The idiosyncratic elasticities have the expected signs in general but are significant only in the case of the scale variable. However, when the power of the test is increased, and allowance made for heterogeneous cointegrating vectors, the group-mean estimator shows a significant negative semi-elasticity of money demand with respect to interest rate.

Factors Affecting Business Students' Performance: The Case of Students in United Arab Emirates

In this study, the authors found that the most important factor that affected student performance was their competence in speaking English. The sample was a group of 864 business and economics students in United Arab Emirates. The authors used regression analysis for the study. The results of the study showed that students who participated in class discussions and who were on leave from their jobs outperformed other students. Missing many lectures and living in a crowded household negatively affected student performance. The results of the study also showed that nonnational students outperformed national students, and female students outperformed their male counterparts.

A Study of the UAE Higher Education Sector in Light of Dubai's Strategic Objectives

We provide an overview of the state of the higher education system in the UAE, and investigate its capacity to supply Dubai’s economy with skilled labor and achieve the emirate’s strategic social development objectives. We examine various characteristics of the higher education sector and discuss their inherent strengths and weaknesses in light of Dubai’s labor market needs. Our findings reveal that the UAE higher education sector has witnessed an impressive growth since 1997 mostly led by a vigorous expansion of the private higher education sector. This situation led to a substantial growth in higher education opportunities for the UAE population. However, the lack of development of graduate studies and the lower quality of graduates, as perceived by both employees and employers, represent the main challenges to the capacity of the sector in fulfilling the needs of Dubai’s economy.

Import demand in heterogeneous panel setting

To study the elasticities of import demand function, a heterogeneous panel is built with data of 40 countries and using panel unit root tests (Im et al., 1997) and panel cointegration tests (Pedroni, 2004). The model is tested with two previously used activity variables: GDP and GDP minus Export for a performance comparison. To estimate elasticities, use is made of two modified panel versions of FMOLS and DOLS developed by Pedroni (1996, 2000, 2001). The tests prove that GDP outperforms GDP minus Exports as an activity variable in the cointegration context. FMOLS and DOLS give close results when individual estimates are done. When between‐dimension estimators are used, conflicting results are obtained. Then, the sample is split into developed and developing countries and it is shown that income elasticity in developing countries are not different than unity on average and are higher than in developed countries contradicting previous literature results.

Building a Smooth Production Possibilities Frontier: A Classroom Experiment

I present a simple and easy-to-prepare classroom experiment to make the concept of increasing opportunity cost easier to understand. Also, the exercise is designed to make a clear link between this concept and the shape of the Production Possibilities Frontier. The results show a clear understanding of the concept. Students are able to derive smooth curves.