Search results

This paper aims to investigate the impact of governance quality on total unemployment in general and female unemployment in particular in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, comparing the post-Arab Spring period to the pre-Arab Spring era.

A fixed-effects model was used to analyze data from 15 MENA countries from 2002 to 2019.

Our results generally indicate that following the Arab Spring, an enhancement in governance quality is linked with a reduction in unemployment in the MENA region, specifically in the Levant and GCC regions, with this reducing effect being stronger for female unemployment compared to total unemployment. Yet, this trend does not hold in North Africa, where government improvements do not result in better employment.

This study uniquely uncovers the different effects of governance quality on unemployment across sub-regions and sheds light on its significant implications on female unemployment. The findings offer valuable insights for policymakers interested in the relationship between governance quality and economic outcomes in the region.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0826

When encountering novel technology, customers often use the term “cool” to express their thoughts; therefore, coolness has become crucial for launching service robots. However, research on the impact mechanism of “coolness” is lacking. This study explored the relationship between delight and behavioral intention regarding the coolness of service robots in the food and beverage industry while discussing the mediating roles of utilitarian and hedonic values.

Questionnaires were distributed online with links to the survey posted on restaurant discussion boards on Facebook and online community platforms such as Dcard. In total, 540 responses were deemed valid. The hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method.

The results indicate that coolness positively impacted both utilitarian and hedonic values and that both perceived values positively impacted delight. Moreover, coolness does not directly impact delight but must be mediated by perceived value to be effective.

Increasing customer perceptions of the coolness of service robots is recommended. Moreover, regarding customer revisits, utilitarian value services can delight customers more effectively than hedonic value services.

The stimulus-organism-response model was used to identify the relationships among coolness, perceived value, delight and behavioral intention. Moreover, the authors investigated the impact of coolness on utilitarian and hedonic values. These findings are significant for the development of smart restaurants and provide a critical reference for exploring service robots.

This research seeks to highlight school partnerships as an approach to improving schools and halting the deterioration of their performance in an environment that has suffered from the consequences of conflict for more than a decade.

The research used the qualitative method, and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 school leaders and teachers.

The results showed the presence of positive attitudes toward inter-school partnerships and their perception of many benefits, the most prominent of which was increasing social cohesion in school and surrounding communities that suffer from divisions resulting from conflict. A set of obstacles includes legislative obstacles, a low degree of autonomy, low competency of school leaders, a lack of trust and incentives.

This study proposes a range of solutions to address the challenges associated with building partnerships. The research emphasizes the significance the school-to-school partnerships and their positive role in improving the performance of schools in developing countries, especially in environments suffering from the consequences of civil wars and social divisions.

As host to over one million Syrian refugees, Lebanon continues to experience challenges addressing the needs of refugee families. This research examined the experiences of Syrian families with the refugee support system in Lebanon. The purpose of this study was to better understand the strengths and gaps in existing mechanisms of support for these Syrian families, including informal support from family, neighbors and community and more formalized support provided through entities such as nongovernmental organizations and United Nations agencies.

Data were collected from 46 families displaced by the war and living in Lebanon (N = 351 individuals within 46 families). Collaborative family interviews were conducted with parents, children and often extended family.

The data identified both strengths and gaps in the refugee support system in Lebanon. Gaps in the refugee support system included inadequate housing, a lack of financial and economic support, challenges with a lack of psychosocial support for pregnant women and support for disabled youth. Despite these challenges, families and community workers reported informal community support as a strong mediator of the challenges in Lebanon. Furthermore, the data find that organizations working with Syrian families are utilizing informal community support through capacity building, to create more effective and sustainable support services.

This study provides an overview of strengths and gaps in supports identified by refugees themselves. The research will inform the development and improvement of better support systems in Lebanon and in other refugee–hosting contexts.

The study investigates the impact of inflation on the variability of relative prices in the context of Lebanon.

Unlike the traditional method, which relies on the variance of cross-sectional price changes measured at specific points in time to gauge the variability in relative prices, we employ a more appropriate approach. Under this approach, we capture the dispersion in relative prices by estimating how widely (or closely) a set of commodity prices drift apart over a span of time, offering a more comprehensive assessment. Firstly, we employ Johansen’s cointegration test on rolling subsamples to determine the number of statistically significant cointegrating vectors among the prices of 12 major commodity groups. Under this approach, an increase in the number of significant cointegrating vectors indicates a reduction in relative price variability, while a decrease suggests the opposite. Subsequently, we employ ordinary least squares regression to analyze how the fluctuations in inflation affect the variability in relative prices. The sample period ranges from December 2007 to April 2021.

The empirical results indicate that there exists a certain threshold inflation rate corresponding to which the variability in relative prices is minimized. More importantly, consistent with the theoretical predictions, the results suggest that it is not inflation per se, but the deviation of inflation from the 3% threshold level in either direction that causes higher dispersion in relative prices.

The empirical findings from this study have crucial implications for the operation of monetary and fiscal policy. In particular, these findings suggest that stabilizing long-term inflation around a certain threshold rate will not only help to anchor inflation expectations effectively but will also minimize the welfare costs associated with inflation.

Given the rising inflationary pressure in the recent past and its welfare costs, the study assumes crucial importance in understating how fluctuations in inflation distort the relative price structure and eventually cause resource misallocations and economic inefficiency.