Paul Dyer
Nonresident Fellow
Bio
Paul Dyer is a nonresident fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. He has over 20 years of research and policy analysis experience on governance and economic development issues in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Dyer’s work has focused on labor market policy and youth development, small and medium enterprise development, the promotion of access to finance, and broader issues of economic inclusion. Recently, he has worked on conflict resolution and post-conflict recovery in Libya, Syria, and Yemen, with attention to rebuilding institutional capacity; as well as the MENA region’s policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In this capacity, Dyer has worked with the World Bank Group, the Islamic Development Bank, the International Labour Organization, and many government agencies and non-governmental organizations in the MENA region. He has published widely, contributing to numerous reports and edited volumes on economic development in the MENA region, as well as implementing several long-term impact evaluations.
In the past, Dyer served as managing associate at Maxwell Stamp, Inc. and knowledge program manager at the Silatech Foundation in Qatar. He was also a fellow at the Dubai School of Government and extended-term consultant at the World Bank. Dyer co-managed the Middle East Youth Initiative, a research initiative focused on understanding institutional barriers to youth economic inclusion in MENA and programmatic solutions to persistent challenges in terms of employment, entrepreneurship, and social development. He also was a founding advisor to the Taqeem Initiative, evaluating youth employment programs in the MENA region.
contact fellowResearch Areas
- Youth transitions
- Labor markets
- Post-conflict recovery
- Institutional reform
Countries of Focus
- Gulf (GCC)
- Yemen
- Libya
Other Areas of Interest
- Demography
- Education reform
- Conflict resolution
- Governance
Education
- M.A., Arab Studies and Economics, Georgetown University, DC, 2002
- B.A., International/Global Studies, College of William and Mary, 1996
Articles
Paul Dyer
Nader S. Kabbani, Paul Dyer, Larbi Sadiki, Adel Abdel Ghafar, Sahar Khamis, Ranj Alaaldin, Dania Thafer, Faozi Al-Goidi
Paul Dyer
Publications
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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health specialists across the globe struggled with efforts to accurately count the number of COVID-19 cases and associated deaths.
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Over the COVID-19 pandemic, Egyptian data on confirmed cases and deaths remained strikingly low, particularly given rates in neighboring countries, high comorbidities within the population, and evidence of infection among many traveling from Egypt. Despite governmental assertions of limited viral spread, COVID-19 was prevalent across the country—as it was in nearly all countries—and it had led to an uncertain number of deaths.
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Polling data from across the Arab world suggests a growing disillusionment with democracy and its role in fostering economic development. While such disillusionment is understandable, it is not necessarily accurate. This paper reviews analytic work and empirical data on governance, economic growth, foreign direct investment, and export diversification in an effort to understand whether metrics of “voice and accountability” (which are often used as proxies for democratic development) are correlated with higher levels of economic growth and performance.
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