IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/pugtwp/332614.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Israeli work permit scheme and the West Bank economy

Author

Listed:
  • Agbahey, Johanes
  • Siddig, Khalid
  • Grethe, Harald

Abstract

The integration of the Israeli and Palestinian labor markets has for a long time attracted attention due the political-military conflict between the two regions and due to mobility restrictions. In the 1980s, access to Israeli labor markets accounted for a significant share of the total Palestinian employment. However, following the first and the second Palestinian uprisings, mobility restrictions and closures have been put in place and enforced. Depending on the intensity of the political tension, restrictions are either set at a high or at a low level. Taking advantage of this unique context, this study for the first time explores the implications for the West Bank economy consequent upon increases and decreases in access to the Israeli labour market. The study uses a SAM developed for the West Bank for the year 2011 with detailed representation of the labor market. Workers are categorized based on their demographic characteristics, their current workplace and eligibility to work permit in Israel. The behavioral relationships in a variant of STAGE suite of CGE models are extended to conform to the unique feature of the labor market between West Bank and Israel. The results demonstrate that while increases in the number of work permits increases welfare in the West Bank, it also distorts the operation of the West Bank labour market and economy. On the other hand, while decreases in the number of work permits reduces welfare, the limited opportunities in the West Bank restrict the ability of the West Bank economy to absorb the labour no longer employed in Israel. Keywords: labour markets, Conflict, Work permits, CGE, Palestine

Suggested Citation

  • Agbahey, Johanes & Siddig, Khalid & Grethe, Harald, 2015. "The Israeli work permit scheme and the West Bank economy," Conference papers 332614, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/332614/files/9062.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Flaig, Dorothee & Siddig, Khalid & Grethe, Harald & Luckmann, Jonas & McDonald, Scott, 2013. "Relaxing Israeli restrictions on Palestinian labour: Who benefits?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 143-150.
    2. Sami Miaari & Robert Sauer, 2011. "The labor market costs of conflict: closures, foreign workers, and Palestinian employment and earnings," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 129-148, March.
    3. Etkes Haggay, 2012. "The Impact of Employment in Israel on the Palestinian Labor Force," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(2), pages 1-36, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Agbahey, Johanes & Siddig, Khalid & Grethe, Harald, 2020. "Implications of labor supply specifications in CGE models: A demonstration for employment of Palestinian labor in Israel and its impact on the West Bank economy," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 265-284.
    2. Agbahey, Johanes & Siddig, Khalid & Grethe, Harald, 2021. "Economy-wide effects of cross-border labor mobility: The case of Palestinian employment in Israel," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 43(5), pages 964-981.
    3. Johanes Agbahey & Khalid Siddig & Harald Grethe & Jonas Luckmann, 2022. "Trade policy in a sovereign Palestinian State: What are the options in a final settlement?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(10), pages 3269-3293, October.
    4. Johanes Agbahey & Khalid Siddig & Harald Grethe, 2017. "Labor exports from the West Bank to Israel: between regretting the past and hoping for a better future," EcoMod2017 10133, EcoMod.
    5. Agbahey Johanes & Siddig Khalid & Grethe Harald & McDonald Scott, 2020. "Labor exports from Palestine to Israel: a boon or bane for the West Bank economy?," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, March.
    6. Agbahey, Johanes & Siddig, Khalid & Grethe, Harald, 2018. "Labour leisure trade-off meets a mobility function to model cross-border movements of labour between Palestine and Israel," Conference papers 333017, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    7. Johanes Agbahey & Khalid Siddig & Harald Grethe, 2016. "Consequences of conflict: the impact of the closure regime on the economy of the West Bank economy," EcoMod2016 9197, EcoMod.
    8. Assaf Zimring, 2015. "Testing the Heckscher-Ohlin-Vanek Theory with a Natural Experiment," Working Papers 642, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    9. Agbahey, Johanes & Siddig, Khalid & Grethe, Harald & Boysen, Ole, 2016. "Consequences of conflict: the impact of the closure regime on the West Bank’s economy," Conference papers 332728, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    10. Calì, Massimiliano & Miaari, Sami H., 2018. "The labor market impact of mobility restrictions: Evidence from the West Bank," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 136-151.
    11. Hendrik Jürges & Luca Stella & Sameh Hallaq & Alexandra Schwarz, 2022. "Cohort at risk: long-term consequences of conflict for child school achievement," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 35(1), pages 1-43, January.
    12. Sami Miaari & Asaf Zussman & Noam Zussman, 2012. "Ethnic conflict and job separations," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 419-437, January.
    13. Kimhi, Ayal, 2015. "Is foreign farm labor a blessing or a curse? Evidence from Israel," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211852, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Miaari, Sami H. & Lee, Ines, 2020. "Obstacles on the Road to School: The Impacts of Mobility Restrictions on Educational Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 13563, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Siddig, Khalid H.A. & Flaig, Dorothee & Luckmann, Jonas & Grethe, Harald, 2011. "A 2004 Social Accounting Matrix for Israel: Documentation of an Economy-Wide Database with a Focus on Agriculture, the Labour Market, and Income Distribution," Working Papers 110156, Universitaet Hohenheim, Institute of Agricultural Policy and Agricultural Markets.
    16. Francesco Amodio & Michele Di Maio, "undated". "Making Do with What You Have: Conflict, Firm Performance and Input Misallocation in Palestine," Development Working Papers 379, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    17. Assaf Zimring, 2019. "Testing the Heckscher–Ohlin–Vanek theory with a natural experiment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 58-92, February.
    18. Fratto,Chiara & Giannone,Elisa, 2020. "Market Access and Development of the ICT Sector in the West Bank," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9426, The World Bank.
    19. Miaari, Sami & Zussman, Asaf & Zussman, Noam, 2014. "Employment restrictions and political violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 24-44.
    20. Di Maio, Michele & Nandi, Tushar K., 2013. "The effect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on child labor and school attendance in the West Bank," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 107-116.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor and Human Capital;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:pugtwp:332614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gtpurus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.