Breaking or Building Bridges?

This Element presents the main characteristics of international trade in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region by analyzing whether its trade policy managed to build or break bridges among MENA countries and with the rest of the world. Its objective is threefold. First, it provides an overview of trade theories from the MENA region perspective. Second, it analyzes the main trends and features of trade flows and trade policies. Third, it shows how trade policies had different development outcomes related to gender, informal employment, and the composition of labor demand. The main findings show that trade policies and domestic characteristics explain the relatively poor performance of trade flows in most of the diversified MENA economies. Also, the MENA region is highly affected by world business cycles given that this region is the largest exporter of oil. Finally, development outcomes still need to be streamlined within trade policies.