24 - 30 January 2002
Issue No.570
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 January 2002 Issue No.570 |
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The clever people
As the winds of global economic turmoil continue to blow, economic researchers are struggling to keep their thinking hats on. Yasmine El-Rashidi joins one think-tank fiesta, listening in on what the experts believe is the key to building, or rebuilding, for the future
Economic research conferences are never raucous affairs. Particularly not when the world is witnessing a global economic commotion. The eighth annual conference of the Economic Research Forum (ERF), was no exception.
The atmosphere was solemn and the mood intense; a gathering of Einstein-type researchers and economists scurrying between conference halls, papers flying, hair flying, glasses hanging off the tips of their noses. Or so it seemed, at least, to the unaccustomed observer.
They had gathered, once again, from across the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA), to discuss their weeks and months, and sometimes years, of economic findings. This time, however, the buzz of solemn minds at work sounded deeper.
"You felt this year that there was a lot more going on inside people's minds," Fawzy Sultan, a financial analyst, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "Its been a rough couple of years, and it shows."
It may have shown on their faces, but not through their words, for in the mass of rooms occupied by the ERF during the three-day January 15-17 event at Cairo's Pyramids Oberoi Hotel, the energy was high.
It was a gold mine of ideas and findings, with each of 50 projects and papers being presented, discussed and debated. And with research areas extending from trade and macro-economic finance, to labour and the environment, the well of information to draw from was vast. But while the minds gathered may have been great, and the research presented solid, the question still hung in the air: what in the world will happen next?
"The economy can turn around overnight," Sultan says. "It happened before. There's no reason why it can't happen again. As economists, we have to be constantly on the alert. On our toes. We never really know when something is going to flip the switch."
Sultan has a point. We never know, in short, when the next 11 September will be. In the meantime, though, some of the region's greatest minds are busy calculating away."
Poverty alleviation is one of their big concerns.
"What is the determinant of a nation's so-called social status?" Karim Naguib, a visiting economist, asked Al-Ahram Weekly. "It's poverty level, and the few issues intertwined within that."
In the case of a country like Egypt, one of the main issues intertwining with poverty is child labour. Appropriately, the conference was inaugurated with a paper by Ragui Assad, Deborah Levison, and Nadia Zibani on The Effect of Child Work on Schooling in Egypt.
"In Egypt poverty is a problem, as is child labour," Naguib continues. To him, the problem is not simply a matter of economics. "You may alleviate the level of each slightly, but...what is the primary factor hindering the alleviation of child labour?" he pauses. "It's society."
Society, he says sternly, is the hardest thing to handle, and the most difficult detriment to deal with.
"It's about culture, and norms, and years and years of customs and habits," Naguib explains. "Among the minority, child labour is unheard of, but amongst the masses, it's the norm."
That's what the real problem is, he says.
"You can tell people all you want that children should not be working and should be in school, but ultimately you need somehow to show them why putting their children in school is actually more beneficial to them. To them, the bottom line is about feeding and clothing themselves. How's school going to do that?" he asks.
The work of Assad, Levison and Zibani may help. It enables researchers to calculate the net impact of work on schooling, correcting for both the observable and unobservable characteristics of the child and the household.
The paper concludes: "The characteristics of boys who work appear to pre-dispose them to drop out from school and engage in market work, but the fact that they work does not seem to be directly responsible for their lack of school attendance. In contrast, the results indicate that girls who engage in either market, subsistence, or domestic work would have remained in school had they not been working. Thus work seems to have a much more direct and detrimental effect on girls' schooling. Paradoxically, it is harder to address girls' work through labour policies because the vast majority of girls work at home, or in subsistence or domestic tasks."
The masses need to be shown what schooling can really do; tempted in to the academic sphere through a look at its future benefits. But while it may be easy enough to do abroad, there are much deeper problems which need to be tackled, for the fundamental pillars which economies such as the US are founded on, are, for the most part, still absent here. Deregulation, trade liberalisation, market openness, and policy reforms are just a sampling of the issues raised at this eighth annual ERF conference: issues that are critical to the building of a solid economic future.
But though the debates may go on, and the issues persist, at the end of the day, what is the use of it all? The buzz of economists and researchers gathered in one locale is a buzz that sounds alien to most. For while the enthusiasm over the findings may send shivers down an economy-minded person's spine, to most they are in a language that registers as near-Chinese.
"Research like this needs to be taken, broken down into simple, non-economic language, and dispersed," Naguib says. "That's how it is used to effect abroad. "It's fine and well that all of us are gathered here to share it, but then what? Who is going to take this and use it?"
He has a point.
In the case of Egypt, however, it needs to be spread to the masses, and it needs to be translated. Twice: into simple-man's terms, and into Arabic.
After that, the economists need to sit back and hope that nobody decides to flip that economic-slowdown switch again.
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