Puberty is defined as the period when sexual maturity is achieved. This maturity does not take place over night; it is a gradual process that lasts a relatively long period of time. Biological maturity is reached upon ovulation for girls and with the discharge of semen for boys. Puberty is not over when one is able to perform his/her reproductive duties; it is a huge transformation that lasts for quite some time and involves the whole body and person.
Adolescence is considered one of the most essential phases in the life of a person; it separates between two extremely vital phases in one's life, namely childhood and adulthood. Most studies all over the Arab world show that the average percentage of youth below the age of 20 has reached one third of the population. This implies that attention to this age group is highly essential because of the demographic weight it represents – over and above the fact that adolescents are going to be responsible for the future of the Arab world in the coming years. Herein lies the importance of concentrating on this category in order to examine its characteristics, attributes and problems.
PurposeThe theoretical and empirical literature stipulated that exchange rate shocks do influence the domestic price of imports. Hence, this paper aims to investigate the underlying relationship between the exchange rate and prices known as the exchange rate pass-through.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) model, drawing on Bernanke (1986) and Sims (1986), to empirically examine and analyze the pass-through of exchange rate fluctuations to domestic prices in Egypt.FindingsThe empirical results of the monthly data between 2003 and 2015 revealed that the exchange rate pass-through in Egypt is fairly substantial but incomplete and slow in the three price indices [IMP, producer price index and consumer price index (CPI)]. However, the impact is more prominent for consumer prices than for any other price index. This finding could be attributed to the fact that the CPI in Egypt is composed of a relatively large number of subsidized commodities and goods with administered prices as well as the authorities' behavior in manipulating prices (i.e. export ban). This is expected to weaken the transmission of exchange rate shocks.Practical implicationsThe result has interesting implications for Egypt's ability to attain an effective inflation targeting regime.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature by assessing the effect of changes in the exchange rate (the Egyptian £vis-à-visthe US$) on prices using an updated time series from 2003 to 2015. It addresses the limitations of the study of Nafieet al.(2004), which found no strong relationship between the exchange rate and inflation rate in the Egyptian context. One of these limitations was using the CPI, as the only price index.
The present paper attempts to expand the existing literature on Central Bank Independence (CBI) by proposing new measures for CBI. It designs two indices: one tackling the de jure CBI and the other assessing the de facto level of CBI. The two measures outweigh traditional measures in various aspects; first, the two indices are more comprehensive in terms of possible institutional arrangements. The de jure index incorporates several aspects related to CBI that were not previously grouped together in a unified index i.e. financial independence, limitations related to indirect credit to government, accountability and transparency. The de facto index comprises the main existing indicators for measuring actual CBI (i.e. turnover ratio, political vulnerability indicator and monetary policy reaction function) in addition to new variables, as the lender of last resort function, independence of central bank board, and financial independence that were not included in almost all previous studies. Second, the two indices allow a higher level of precision as they comprise aspects that can be objectively codified with a minimum level of subjectivity. Third, the two indices cover the same attributes of CBI to facilitate measuring the deviation between de jure and de facto level of independence for any central bank. The current paper provides a comprehensive definition and analysis of both indices to enable their replication in future studies.
