Turkey has one of the world’s zippiest economies, but it is too reliant on hot money

CAIRO – Last year’s events in Egypt and Tunisia drew the curtain on a tottering old order and delivered much of the Arab world into a long-awaited new era. But what that new era will look like remains very much an open question, given the many challenges that the region’s countries still face.

It has become commonplace for people to talk about the middle class and its role in economic and societal transformations, and many have credited this group with playing a role in the current changes sweeping the region. But despite the newfound ease with which people talk about it, there are those who argue that the middle class has dwindled and that its values and the role it plays in Arab societies have changed.

Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel laureate in economics, is the founding director of the Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. This article first appeared in Le Monde.

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars.

Food prices are skyrocketing across the world, and last month, they peaked to the highest levels since the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization began indexing them in 1990. In the Middle East, wheat prices are playing a role in the ongoing unrest, particularly in Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer.

Recent reports from the IMF and Qatari authorities confirm that Qatar is on track to be the fastest-growing economy in the Middle East, and may be among the fastest in the world, reports Global Arab Network according to OBG.

Lebanon’s economy is booming. But to sustain the current growth spell and translate economic expansion into jobs and broader social gains, the country must strengthen public finances, upgrade its infrastructure, and improve the business environment, say IMF economists.

After three decades of economic progress but political paralysis, change is in the air, says Max Rodenbeck

By bringing its vast gas reserves to the world, and turning gas into liquid oil, the tiny emirate is making some investors forget all about Dubai