Jeffrey B. Nugent is Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California where he teaches Development Economics. As a researcher in this field he has worked on a wide variety of issues, problems and analytical techniques and in and on a variety of countries from Latin America, Africa, South and East Asia and especially the Middle East and North Africa. In recent years, much of this work has focused on trade, labor markets and income distribution issues, including both household and firm behavior. Much of this work makes use of new institutional economics, political economy and econometric perspectives, emphasizing the role of institutional considerations including transaction costs and contract enforcement. He has served on the Board of the Cairo-based Economic Research Forum, the Middle East Economic Association for which he served as Executive Secretary for four years and President for three, and the Western Economic Association international, and serves on the editorial boards of eight scholarly journals. I am also Associate Director of the USC Dornsife Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in April 2010, and had papers presented at IZA Confrence on "Political Economy of Labor Market Reform in Transition and Emerging Economies" in Bonn and the World Bank?IZA Employment and Development Conference (Cape Town) )with my co-author Nauro Campos), Our paper is also available as an IZA Discussion Paper
In the next few days I will be submitting a paper with Zara Liaqat on "The Under-provision of Private Training by MENA Firms: What to Do About It?"