MEDiterranean PROspects

After graduating from HEC Paris in 1965, Jawad Kerdoudi was recruited by the Bureau for Exports Commercialization of Morocco which had the monopoly on Moroccan exports of agricultural products by then. After a successful career, he became chief officer of the bureau in Hamburg (Germany) and New York (United States) while at the same time being Consul General of the Kingdom of Morocco. He came back to Morocco where he held various executive positions within the Bureau of Exports Commercialization and its holding company. After being in charge of wine exports, he retired in 2002 and created the Moroccan Institute of International Relations (IMRI) in 2003, a think tank devoted to the analysis of changing international relations. Simultaneously to his executive position at IMRI, Jawad Kerdoudi teaches international trade at graduate level in Rabat and Casablanca. He is the author of several books on Moroccan external trade, on the Spanish model in addition to regular articles and commentaries in the Moroccan media.

Mrs. Saloua Ben Zaghou-Bahri, born in Tunis (1946), is the director of the Tunisian Institute of Competitiveness and Quantitative Studies (ITCEQ). She graduated from the Sciences’ Faculty of Tunis and from the School of Statistics and Economic Administration of Paris (ENSAE). Her expertise covers a wide range of issues among which: education economics (in cooperation with Algier’s Center for Research in Applied Economics, CREA), exchange rate policy, monetary and financial policy, banking economics, knowledge economics, macroeconomic, VAR and general equilibrium modeling (especially for the ITCEQ within impact assessment studies and scenario analysis). Dr. Ben Zaghou takes part in national consultations on employment and productivity and is member of the National Council on Statistics and of the Committee on stock market indexes.

Jean Louis Reiffers is « Professeur Agregé » in International Economics at the University of Toulon-Var and Associate Professor at Euromed Management. He is president of the Second Chance School, president of the Scientific Council of the Institut de la Méditerrannée and coordinator of the FEMISE’s scientific council. Jean Louis Reiffers was born on September 26th 1941 and obtained his PhD in international economics and finance in 1969. He then became “Professeur Agregé” in 1970 and Dean as well as Vice President of the Aix-Marseille II Faculty of Economics. IN 1970 and for the next 10 years Prof. Reiffers was Director of the Centre of Economics and International Finance (CEFI/CNRS). He was also adviser to the French Minister of Education, Mrs. Edith Cresson. With the help of Marseilles’ regional authorities he created the “Institut de la Méditerrannée” in 1993 of which he became president of the scientific council in order to contribute to the definition of the wide euro mediterranean region. In 1995, he is appointed by the European Commission as president of the working group on education and training. He then contributed to setting of the first Europe’s Second Chance School as he had already proposed in the white paper on education. He is president of the school since 2001. In 1997, in collaboration with Cairo’s Economic Reseach Forum, he created the FEMISE network of which he is president of the scientific council. The FEMISE network gathers today 85 research institutions from the Euromed process. He is author of numerous books and manages the annual reports on the Euromed Partnership published by FEMISE.

Dr. Frederic Blanc is currently the General Manager of the Femise, euromed network of Economics institutes, supported by the European Commission. He is also Chief Economist of the Institut de la Mediterranee (since October 2001, French NGO localised in Marseilles which coordinates the Femise network jointly with ERF since 1997). PhD in 1996, A. von Humboldt fellow (post-doc in 1997 in Frankfurt am Main, Goethe Universität), he entered then Institut de la Mediterranee in 1997. He took the responsibility of the Femise project in 2001, became Team Leader in 2005, when the Femise was transformed into a NGO. Contributor to all Femise Euromed reports of which the 2009 reports on Mediterranean Countries Facing the Crisis, he also contributes to Plan Bleu – EIB study, “Climate change and energy in the Mediterranean” (2008), coordinates the Femise research on “the Challenge of the employment in the Mediterranean Countries (2007), contributes to World Bank Institute researches on Knowledge Economies in Mena Region with Prof. Reiffers (2003), to IFRI report for European Commission DG Trade, “The World Trade in 21st century” (2002).

Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science- Cairo University since August 2008, and Professor of Economics, Cairo University since 1995.
My main areas of specialization are macroeconomic analysis and labor market research. During the last 20 years I have been heavily involved in conducting economic surveys. The fields of research varied and included several topics such as labor market research projects, micro and small enterprises surveys, empirical studies on industrial enterprises especially in the areas of textiles and electronics, industrial complexes/clusters. In the last seven years I got engaged in socio-economic household surveys and socio-economic and political polls.

The latest research papers and reports were:

• El Mahdi, A., 2009, "The repercussions of the Financial Crisis on the Economic Activity and Employment, in the conference on:Social Implications of the Economic Crisis on the Egyptian Economy and the ways out of it”, Center of Economic and Financial Research and Studies, Cairo.
• El Mahdi, A., etal, 2009, "A Survey Study of the Implications of the Application of Quality Assurance Programs on the Improvement of Education", for the Quality Assurance Program, Ministry of Higher Education, Cairo.
• El Mahdi, A., etal, 2008, "Science and Technology in a sample of Private Sector Companies in Egypt", Ministry of Higher Education, Cairo.
• El Mahdi, A. etal, 2008, Egypt’s Human Development Report 2008, Ministry of Economic Development and UNDP, Cairo
• El Mahdi, A. and H.El Said,Ed.,(2007), The Role of Financial and Non-financial Services in Supporting MSMEs in Egypt, CEFRS and the Egyptian Banking Institute, Cairo.
• El Mahdi,A. & M. Metwally, Ed.,(2007), Evaluation of the Privatization Program in Egypt (1992-2006), UNDP and Center for Economic and Financial Research and Studies, Cairo.

Dr. Rym Ayadi is the coordinator of MEDPRO, member of the scientific bureau and WP6- Financial services and capital markets leader.
Dr. Rym Ayadi is Senior Research Fellow and Head of Research of the Financial Institutions, Prudential Policy and Tax Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies since 2001. She holds a PhD in economics and finance at the University Paris Dauphine. Previous to CEPS, she was economist at the French banking association in Paris and at the European Commission in Directorate General Economics and Financial Affairs. She also lectured industrial economics and game theory at university of Lille II and at the university Paris Dauphine in France and international financial institutions & markets and financial & risk analysis at the International Business School of the Isle of Man. Rym Ayadi has authored several books and papers on financial market regulation and integration in Europe. Recently, she has developed a particular interest for South Mediterranean Region and Africa with a focus on business and financial markets development, SME financing, foreign direct investment and trade. She acted as a senior expert in several projects on the regions e.g. the Euro-Mediterranean Charter development and evaluation, EU-Mediterranean Partnership evaluation, banking and financial markets developments and regulation in economies in transition, competition policy and economic integration in the Mediterranean region. She managed several projects on financial services, trade, enterprise, consumer and foreign policies funded by the European Union institutions; she is senior expert of several expert groups set by the European Commission on financial services policies and external advisor to the European Parliament on banking regulation, crisis management and Euro-med relations. She is “Rapporteur” for several high-level CEPS working parties, Vice President of the European Financial Inclusion Network (EFIN), a European network that promotes mutual learning on financial inclusion and invited lecturer in several European universities.
 

Dr. Manfred Hafner has a more than 20 years international carrier in the energy sector and in particular on the Mediterranean region. He presently coordinates energy policy activities at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM); is President for Europe, MENA, Russia and CIS at International Energy Consultants (IEC); and teaches energy economics, markets and policy at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, the Institut Français du Pétrole, HEC-Paris and the Florence School of Regulation. Until early 2008 he was for many years the Scientific Director of OME (Observatoire Méditerranéen de l’Energie – a think tank and association of some 35 major energy operators in the Euro-Mediterranean area). Dr. Hafner has consulted extensively on energy issues for industry, governments and international organizations and coordinated several large research projects for the European Commission. He holds master degrees in energy engineering, economics and policy from the Technische Universität München (Germany), the Insitut Français du Pétrole (France), the Université Paris2/Panthéon Assas (France) and the University of Pennsylvania (USA). He also holds a PhD from the Ecole des Mines de Paris. He speaks English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

A Palestinian national with a Ph.D. in Economics. Since Dec. 2009, he has served as the Director General of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), a position which he previously held from 2004-2007. Prior to joining MAS, Dr. Abdullah served as the Minister of Planning and Minister of Labor in the Palestinian Government from June 2007 to May 2009. Dr. Abdullah started his career in the academic field as an Assistant Professor in 1984, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1990. During his work he conducted numerous research papers on the Palestinian economy. He is also affiliated with many boards and institutions, amongst is the Board of Directors of the Palestine Monetary Authority –PMA since (2006-2011).

A diplomat and ambassador, he holds a degree in Economic Science (1971) and in Law (1972) from the Universitat de Barcelona. He studied for his doctorate in Economics at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (1973-1974); as a Fullbright scholarship holder at New York University, Ph. D. Program (1974-1976), and at the Universidad Complutensede Madrid, where he presented his doctoral thesis in 1979. Diploma in International Studies from the Diplomatic School of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. He has also been Director of Studies at the Diplomatic School of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and Professor of International Economics and Development at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Marek Dabrowski is Professor of Economics and President of CASE, Member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for the Economy in Transition in Moscow, Member of the Executive Committee of the Association of the Comparative Economic Studies, Member of the Scientific Committee of the European Journal of Comparative Economics, and Member of the Consulting Board of the 'Economic Systems' Journal. Former First Deputy Minister of Finance (1989-1990), Member of Parliament (1991-1993) and Member of the Monetary Policy Council of the National Bank of Poland (1998-2004). From the end of 1980s he has been involved in policy advising and policy research in several European and Asian countries. He will be part of the Scientific Bureau and will advise the leader of WP5.