The concept of interest in the Western and Middle Eastern society

The entire banking systems in the western societies is based on the use of interest. The bank charges the borowers interest on its loans and pays its depositors interest on their deposits. On the other hand, the Middle Eastern banking system is an interest free system that prohibits the use of interest, either in receipt or in payment

Assessing the Consequences of the Economic Partnership Agreement on the Ethiopian Economy

The results presented indicate that a free trade area would reinforce the linkages between Ethiopia and European countries, including traditional partners such as Italy, with implications for the regional integration arrangements that Ethiopia is currently involved in. There will be significant trade diversion away from other African countries currently trading with Ethiopia. The diversion will occur in the lowtechnology sectors, which are potentially good foundations for deepened regional integration based on trade in industrial goods. The results further indicate some important implications with respect to Ethiopia’s industrialization strategy. The liberalization of industrial sectors result in more trade effects, particularly negative trade diversion, compared to the results from agricultural liberalization. The loss in revenue, which is a strong feature in general liberalization, is at the sectoral level, more pronounced in the industrial liberalization. The economic structure of Ethiopia, which supports self-reliance in food from the agriculture sector, underpins the limited losses in agriculture as compared to the industrial sector. Clearly, instead of opening the doors to economic diversification, the EPA could lead Ethiopia to deepen its comparative advantages in agricultural products.Ethiopia- Economic Partnership Agreement- Trade impact

The Cost of non-Maghreb: Achieving the Gains from Economic Integration

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of the integration of Maghreb countries into a free trade area on the main macroeconomic aggregates. By using the MIRAGE model and MacMap database, we tested different scenarios to estimate the gains or the potential losses of various plans of trade integration (Free trade area for the Maghreb countries, Custom Union between Maghreb countries, Maghreban Common Market). Our study suggests that the overall gains from liberalizing trade in goods (and removing various regulatory non-tariff barriers in the process) could reach at least USD 350 million. The increase in revenue through increases in production and wages would positively affect welfare levels for Maghreb consumers. The dynamic gains from liberalizing trade in goods can outstrip the static gains, with productivity improvements as the main driver. Our analysis shows that the creation of a common market is probably the most interesting and efficient option for the Maghreb countries.Free Trade Area, Maghreb, and CGE Model

Diversification: towards a new paradigm for Africa’s development

This paper is articulated around the following chapters. After this introduction, the first chapter will underscore Africa’s development stakes. This analysis will enable us to tackle the problem of modernizing and diversifying the productive fabric of African economies. The second chapter will be devoted to the recent renewal of the diversification problem. It will enable us to underscore the new concerns and the development of the debate on this issue since the failure of the experiences of the 1970’s. The third chapter will be devoted to the presentation and the discussion of diversification gauging tools. The fourth chapter will present facts connected to the diversification of African economies. In this chapter, we took a comparative approach that would allow us to put into perspective the different sub-regional experiences as well as link Africa’s economic history in comparison to that of Asia and Latin America. In the fifth chapter, we will abandon the descriptive approach in favour of analytical elements and attempt to determine factors justifying diversification. This approach will be reflected upon in detail in the sixth chapter where we will focus our attention on the relation between diversification and economic growth. Finally, in the last chapter we will look into formulating economic policy recommendations for African countries in the area of diversification.Diversification- Africa- Regional Economic Communities

Can Market Access Help African Agriculture?

This paper examines the implications for African economies of the possible outcomes from the ongoing agriculture negotiations in the Doha Round. The paper defines scenarios that capture key elements of the modalities negotiations and undertakes simulations using a global dynamic general equilibrium model to examine the impact of multilateral agricultural trade reforms on African economies. The scenarios vary in their level of ambition in the market access pillar through both the level of tariff cuts in the different tiers and the level of sensitive sectors defined both for developed and developing economies. Results show that ambitious coefficients in the market access pillar remain the best outcome for Africa. Even what might seem to be an insignificant definition of sensitive products for developed countries erodes potential benefits from deep tariff cuts for African countries. This suggests that utilizing sensitive products tariff lines by developed countries not only dampens the expected positive outcomes for agriculture negotiations in favour of Africa but could also actually wipe out such gains. The results further confirm findings of other studies showing that tariff cuts for agricultural goods yield higher gains than elimination of subsidies, and this applies mainly to net food importing developing countries. Thus, reduction of subsidies should go hand-in-hand with agricultural tariff reductions in order to ensure win-win outcomes.Agriculture in International Trade, Welfare Economics, Computable General Equilibrium, Models, Africa

Economic and Welfare Impacts of the EU-Africa Economic Partnership Agreements

Th is study examines the economic and social impacts of the trade liberalization aspects of the proposed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and African countries. It provides a quantitative assessment of the likely implications of EPAs establishing Free Trade Areas (FTAs) between the EU and the various African Regional Economic Communities (RECs). Th e focus of the empirical analysis is on the trade liberalization component of the EPAs. In particular, the following questions are addressed. First, how will an EPA that includes reciprocal market access agreements between the EU and Africa impact on African countries’ GDPs, levels of employment and other macroeconomic aggregates? Second, what sectors in Africa are most likely to lose and what sectors gain with EPAs? Th ird, what are the welfare implications for African countries from the EPAs? Fourth, how will the formation of EPAs aff ect trade expansion through trade creation and trade diversion eff ects? Fifth, what are the potential fi scal implications of the EPAs? Th e main conclusions drawn from the results and the discussions are that full reciprocity will be very costly for Africa irrespective of how the issue is looked at. A focus on deepening integration with a view to enhancing intra-African trade would provide positive results. But it is the scenario that off ers unrestricted market access for Africa, which deals eff ectively with barriers associated with sensitive European products, that portends the largest gain for the continent. Even with reciprocity, a free trade area that includes sectors of export interest to Africa and one that deals with non-tariff barriers promises positive results for African countries.EPA- Africa- Europe

Multiway clustering of 3-order tensor via affinity matrix

We propose a new method of multiway clustering for 3-order tensors via affinity matrix (MCAM). Based on a notion of similarity between the tensor slices and the spread of information of each slice, our model builds an affinity/similarity matrix on which we apply advanced clustering methods. The combination of all clusters of the three modes delivers the desired multiway clustering. Finally, MCAM achieves competitive results compared with other known algorithms on synthetics and real datasets