Person:
Mottaghi, Lili
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Macroeconomics,
Economic growth,
Trade policy
Degrees
ORCID
External Links
Departments
Office of the Chief Economist for Middle East and North Africa
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Lili Mottaghi is a Senior Economist in the office of the Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa Region of the World Bank. She leads the work on regional macroeconomic outlook and has developed two semi-annual flagship publications MENA Economic Monitor and MENA Quarterly Economic Brief which presents the World Bank Group’s views on regional economic developments and prospects, growth forecast, and policy challenges. She also leads the impact evaluation research in the newly established MNA Gender Research Hub at the World Bank. Ms. Mottaghi is the author and co-author of numerous publications including articles published in international journals and World Bank reports. Her research covers a wide range of topics in macroeconomics and development including inclusive growth, technology, and the digital economy, commodity market forecast, inequality, forced displacement, and conflict. Before joining the Bank, she worked at the Management and Planning Organization in Iran where she held senior positions in the areas of economic growth, development, and macroeconomic modeling. Ms. Mottaghi received her Master and Ph.D. degrees in Economics from Claremont Graduate University and University of Tehran.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 21
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Publication
The Impact of Remittances on Growth Evidence from North African Countries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-09-30)Remittances constitute financial flows that affect the receiving country's economy and its development through diverse channels, including income, consumption, investment, government policies, potential parental absence, and removal of potential entrepreneurial individuals from the community. In view of the economic significance of remittance flows to North African economies, this paper utilizes an econometric model aimed at empirically evaluating the growth impact of remittances on four receiving economies during the period from 1980 to 2007. The model focuses on assessing the role of financial development in determining the growth impact of remittance flows to the region. The paper is organized in four main sections. Section two looks at the scope of migration movements in the four North African countries and the importance of remittance flows to the region. It shows the historical, current and future importance of remittance flows to North African economies. The third section elaborates upon what is known about the economic impacts of remittances at large. It details the major potential macroeconomic impacts of remittances through a literature review on growth and remittances. It also looks at the various channels through which remittances can impact growth. Section four presents an econometric model evaluating the growth impact of remittances with and without the financial sector variable and the results. The fifth section summarizes the main results and concludes. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Regional Economic Update, April 2014 : Harnessing the Global Recovery - A Tough Road Ahead
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-04)Compared with the previous three years, 2014 seems hopeful and 2015 could be a turning point for the countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Many countries in MENA will start to benefit from stronger external demand in the high-income economies, as the global economy is set for a rebound in 2014. In the MENA region, higher global demand is expected to boost exports of energy and manufactured products in those countries that have trade linkages with high- income countries. Growth in MENA is expected to reach 3.3 percent in 2014 and further accelerate to 4.6 percent in 2015. Nevertheless, the prospects for growth in MENA could be threatened if long awaited structural problems remain unresolved. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Quarterly Economic Brief, January 2014 : Growth Slowdown Heightens the Need for Reforms
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-01)Ongoing regional tensions, together with a challenging (albeit slightly improving) external environment, have hit the economies of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region hard. Economic growth is slowing, fiscal buffers are depleting, unemployment is rising, and inflation is mounting in seven of the region’s most vulnerable economies-- Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen and Libya. Short-term policy actions such as increasing public sector wages and subsidies—aimed at reducing social tensions--exacerbate the situation, which is driven by long-standing structural weaknesses, including labor market rigidities, complicated and opaque regulations, infrastructure deficiencies, regressive and inefficient subsidies, and inadequate social safety nets. While these countries face an unstable political and macroeconomic environment, the growth slowdown after the Arab Spring creates a unique opportunity to address these structural problems to both create fiscal space and restructure the economy towards job creation and inclusive growth. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Quarterly Economic Brief, July 2013 : Growth Slowdown Extends into 2013
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-07)While the focus has been on the recent change in government in Egypt, five countries in the Middle East and North Africa Region, including Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran are facing a growth slowdown, rising fiscal deficits and debt, and high unemployment and inflation. Continued political turmoil in Egypt and spillovers from the civil war in Syria to Jordan and Lebanon threaten to make their economic situation worse. While easing political tensions in Tunisia and post-election improvements in Iran’s international relations may help these countries, the overall macroeconomic outlook in all five countries for the rest of 2013 is grim. -
Publication
Harnessing the Global Recovery : A Tough Road Ahead
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-04)Compared with the past three years, 2014 seems hopeful and 2015 can be a turning point for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. After a slowdown in 2013, recovery in high income economies is expected to boost global growth to 3.2 percent in 2014, an increase of 0.8 percent from 2013. Global output is to improve further in 2015 with real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 3.4 percent. In addition to growth expansion in the United States, the United Kingdom, as well modest recovery in the Euro zone countries, global growth will continue to be driven by growth in developing countries, expected to be between 5.3 to 5.5 percent in 2014 and 2015 respectively, led by China and India. Higher global demand is expected to boost MENA energy and manufactured exports in countries that have trade linkages with high-income countries. MENA countries share many structural problems that have prevented economies from moving to a higher, sustainable growth path. Fiscal spending in almost all MENA countries is dominated by a large civil-service wage bill and general subsidies. The global recovery remains fragile and downside risks, including continued low inflation in high-income economies, can weaken demand and delay economic recovery. -
Publication
MENA Quarterly Economic Brief, July 2015: Economic Implications of Lifting Sanctions on Iran
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-07)Iran and the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and Germany (P5+1) reached a deal on July 14, 2015 that limits Iranian nuclear activity in return for lifting all international sanctions that were placed on Iran (Box 1). This issue of the MENA Quarterly Economic Brief (QEB) traces the economic effects of this development—removing sanctions on Iran—on the world oil market, on Iran’s trading partners, and on the Iranian economy. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor, October 2015: Inequality, Uprisings, and Conflict in the Arab World
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-10-21)The short-term prospects for a growth recovery in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are slim in the context of low oil prices and conflict escalation. Regional GDP growth, estimated at around 2.8 percent in 2015, will remain weak if current circumstances persist. In fact, since the Arab Spring, the region has seen a growth slowdown and a rise in the incidence of civil wars. This report explores how the region got to this state. It examines whether inequality or other factors contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings as well as to the ensuing conflicts. The report concludes that expenditure inequality, which was relatively low and declining, could not been a major factor in triggering the Arab Spring events, although wealth disparities, which are typically higher, could have been. Instead, we find that ordinary people, especially the middle class, were frustrated by the decline in their standards of living, related to the shortage of quality jobs, the poor quality of public services and lack of government accountability. The report also explores whether inequality played a role in the increase in the incidence of violence after the Arab Spring and finds suggestive evidence that intergroup inequality, rather than monetary inequality, contributed to the escalation of conflict. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor, April 2015: Towards a New Social Contract
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-04)The economic outlook for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2015 is slightly more favorable than in 2013-14, when the region as a whole grew at 3 percent a year. The World Bank group’s latest MENA Economic Monitor projects MENA’s economic growth to average 5.2 percent in 2015 driven by domestic consumption, easing political tensions crowding-in investments in Egypt and Tunisia, and full resumption of oil production in Libya. However the violent conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Yemen and Libya with their spillovers to Lebanon and Jordan could make MENA’s economic prospects bleak. The report has a special focus on the corrosive nature of the large energy subsidies in MENA. The MENA region is currently experiencing growth below potential, high unemployment, urban air pollution and congestion, and severe water scarcity that is undermining agriculture. The report shows how energy subsidies have contributed to these development challenges. Reforming these subsidies, therefore, should be one of the highest priorities of policymakers. -
Publication
MENA Quarterly Economic Brief, January 2016: The Economic Effects of War and Peace
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-02-03)This report estimates economic growth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to fall short of expectations, at 2.6 percent in 2015, below the 2.8 percent predicted in October. Being constrained by war, terrorism and to some extent cheap oil, short term growth prospects in MENA remain “cautiously pessimistic.” Not only have the civil wars caused untold damage to human and physical capital, in Yemen the number of poor people has almost doubled after the war, but they have created one of the biggest forced displacement crises since World War II. The report examines the different ways in which civil wars are affecting the economies of the region, including the important channel of forced displacement. We also explore how economic fortunes will turn around if there is peace. A peace settlement in the war-torn Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen could lead to a swift rebound in oil output and exports, allowing them to increase fiscal space, improve current account balances and boost economic growth in the medium term with positive spillovers to the neighboring countries. -
Publication
Middle East and North Africa Economic Monitor, April 2016: Syria, Reconstruction for Peace
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-04-11)The short term economic outlook for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains “cautiously pessimistic”. A combination of civil wars and refugee inflows, terrorist attacks, cheap oil, and subdued global economic recovery is expected to keep average growth in the MENA region around 3 percent in 2016, for the fourth year in a row. Furthermore, the humanitarian and economic situation in the war torn countries keep deteriorating. In this report we will explore ways in which a strategy of reconstruction of Syria—the most war-ravaged country in the region—could help foster a sustainable peace. This report argues that the impact of the civil war on the Syrian society will be persistent, and the challenges facing the country need to be addressed now. The report calls for the international community to be the guarantor of an inclusive reconstruction strategy that not only makes peace sustainable tomorrow, but makes it happen today: peace and reconstruction are two sides of the same coin.