I am pleased to inform our readers that we have selected six remarkable articles tackling issues of great importance to the OIC member countries in this June Issue of the Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development. The development of modern and sustainable economy has recently gained greater importance and attention in many developing countries as a major driver of social-economic progress. In this connection, this June issue sheds light on themes related to impacts on prices and policy implication, liberalization, youth unemployment, Islamic Inclusive Growth Index, economic impact of constructing a Gaza Seaport and democracy and human development nexus.

The first article focuses on the use of data from 46 African countries over the period from 1990 to 2012 by examining three principal issues:

1. whether human development is affected by the level or the stock of democracy in these countries; and whether the affect varies over time.
2. whether a country’s level of development and education level foster or impede the impact of democracy on human development.
3. whether a democratic regime helps to further improve the health of its population via redistribution mechanisms.

The results seem to contain good news for African countries that inherited bad political institutions or systems from the earlier or colonial regimes.

The second article focuses on the role of infrastructure as a catalyst of economic development. Among the different types of transport infrastructure, seaports are considered as especially strategic due to the increasing importance of maritime transport in deciding transport costs and international trade in the age of globalization. The construction of a Gaza Seaport is a computable general equilibrium model of the Palestinian economy to simulate the effects on the Palestinian economy.

The third article develops an Islamic Inclusive Growth Index (i-IGI) - a composite index of growth inclusiveness - for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) of the member countries. It comprises of three sub- pillars to measure the countries’ performance based on three building blocks of inclusiveness. Despite having a good performance on the three pillars of inclusiveness, the OIC member countries in the Central Asia are lagging behind in terms of their conformity with Maqasid al-Shari’ah principles.

The fourth article paper examines the determinants of youth unemployment in OIC countries during the period 1993-2012. The study used a dynamic panel data method for a sample of 32 OIC countries, focusing on the impact of economic, demographic and institutional factors. The empirical results show that youth unemployment in OIC countries is influenced by economic environment measured by GDP growth, inflation and domestic investment. Fertility rate and bureaucracy quality are found to be one of the significant factors behind the high rate of youth unemployment in OIC member countries.

The fifth highlights that trade liberalization due to its improving role has been at the center of economies in recent years. To test the hypothesis whether trade liberalization boosts tax revenue, a panel of 83 countries, over 1990–2012, has been applied to perform Generalized Method of Moment regression. The results of dynamic panel estimation show more trade liberalization is accompanied by more tax revenue. Therefore, there is the need for appropriate macroeconomic policy to enhance the trade liberalization in order to accelerate government revenue.

The sixth and last examines the input-output model by analysing the effect of removing energy subsidies on prices in Morocco. Three scenarios of increasing oil prices by 25%, 50% and 75% have set to show that the effects on inputs prices are high in intensive oil products sectors such as transports, manufacturing industries, fishing and aquaculture, and, electricity and water sectors.

Amb. Musa KULAKLIKAYA
Editor-in-chief

Articles of the Journal of Economic Cooperation and Development, Vol.37 No.2 (2016)