The paper investigates questions relating to reserves adequacy, optimality, and adjustment for seventeen Arab countries during the period 1980-2002. In section II we analyze reserve adequacy from the vantage of three reserve ratios: reserves to imports, to capture current account sustainability; reserves to short-term debt, to assess debt sustainability; and reserves to broad money, to conjecture the extent of capital flight.

There are two main competing approaches with regard to market structure and business performance. These are the structure-conduct-performance (SCP) paradigm and the efficient market (EM) hypothesis. The former emphasizes market collusion, while the latter stresses the superior operating efficiency of particular firms. In this paper we present the results from testing both hypotheses in the Kuwaiti, Saudi, and UAE banking markets for the period 1999-2002. The results support the EM hypothesis in both Kuwait and the UAE, and the SCP paradigm in Saudi Arabia.

The paper analyses the determinants of intra-Arab exports and FDI during the 1997-2003 period. It does that against a background of multitude of preferential trading arrangements currently under way in the Arab world. Section II presents a brief description of intra-Arab exports, their intensity, and their comparative advantage, in addition to the main features of intra-Arab FDI.