Chart of the Week

There is no doubt that the future success of nations depends on their capacity for innovation. Leading consulting firms like Boston Consulting Group, along with organizations such as the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), have been developing indices to measure innovation and its impact on a country's well-being.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 17 May 2016

In this Chart of the Week, we shed light on the metrics of scientific publications in Tunisia to understand its dynamics and trace its patterns. Tunisia ranks 59th worldwide with 44,798 scientific publications. Many international organizations have developed ranking systems such as the H-index, which takes into account factors like publications per capita, citable vs. non-citable effects, and more.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 26 May 2015

In this note we carry a preliminary investigation to examine the relationship between the corruption level in a given economy and the nature of the political regime it governs. We consider a set of 150 countries, 71 of which have a parliamentary regime in place and the rest (79) are governed by a presidential (or semi-presidential) political system, as of December 2013. Monarchies, totalitarian single party and theocracy regimes are ruled out from data.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 03 March 2015

The World Justice Project (WJP) performed a study in 99 countries all over the world and proposed the WJP Rule of Law Index 2014 (Average ranking 1 is the strongest and 99 is the weakest). Whenever the index is low, it affects negatively the health system, and the foreign investments and justice is applied unequally about criminal violence and fundamental rights leading to dearth in accountability. Whenever the index is high, it affects positively many areas such as education, health system, corruption and poverty.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 09 January 2015

Ease of doing business is a recent and evolving index used by many corporate and quantitative analysts to help making investment decisions. The main components are: Starting a business, Dealing with Construction Permits, Getting electricity, Registering a property, Getting Credit, Protecting Investors, Paying Taxes, Trading Across borders, Enforcing Contracts, Resolving Insolvency. In this note we shed some light on this index, present where Tunisia is globally, and investigate some improvement ideas.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 23 September 2014

TUNESS Chart of the Week (06/28/2014)

We estimate this week the corruption index (as developed by Transparency International) using the Neural Network technique*. Our goal is to predict the corruption index for a sample of 40 countries (with a training sample comprising about 100 countries) based on a set of indicators seemingly uncorrelated with bribery practices. Six covariates are used to develop the present model.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 28 June 2014

Several attempts have been made to understand the recurrent problem of unemployment in Tunisia mainly from the supply side of the labor market. This week we take a closer look at the demand side of this market and more specifically at some of the characteristics of the entrepreneurial activities in Tunisia. Our interest in understanding the geographical distribution and organizational features of local business steams from two reasons;(a) In a small and open economy like Tunisia with no abundant natural resources to rely upon, domestic firms play a catalyst role in the economic development of the country, in the modernization of neighboring geographic area and the absorption of growing and young educated labor force; (b) Local policy-makers receive very often

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 26 December 2013

R&D Spending by country and desired R&D to GDP Ratio

Worldwide studies indicate correlation between Research and Development (R&D) and national prosperity. R&D spending could be used as sustainable stimulus to revive an economy. Trends of R&D as a percentage of GDP in TUNISIA and relative to other peer countries are presented in this chart. As reported by the World Bank, from 1996 to 2009 Tunisia R&D spending went from 0.3% to 1.1%. While similar trends were noticed for MENA countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, the rates remained noticeably low relative to advanced countries

Details: Written by: Zied Driss; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 12 December 2013

This week we study a selection of indicators capturing the Environmental Performance of certain MENA countries. Our goal is review how well countries succeed in reducing environmental stresses on human health and promoting ecosystem vitality and sound natural resource management. We adopt an uncommon method (Chernoff Faces) which has been applied in several other fields. This method named after its creator (Chernoﬀ, Department of Statistics, Stanford University; 1973, Journal of the American Statistical Association 68: 361–368) proposes the use of cartoon-like faces to represent points in k dimensions.

Details: Written by: TUNESS Research Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 04 December 2013

As the new constitution of the Tunisia’s second republic is now finally passed with an overwhelming majority, we look this week into some of the key features
of the final draft (before the historic approval on Jan 26, 2014). Using the Text mining technique, we attempt to contrast our findings with 3 other important benchmarks, namely the first Tunisian constitution of 1959, the latest French constitution of 1958 and the United States constitution of 1787. While our goal is to leave it up to our readers to make their own conclusions on this comparative analysis, we find it interesting to highlight few results that appear quite telling.

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 04 December 2013

Parmi les indicateurs clés pour analyser la question du risque de défaut de l’état tunisien à honorer ses engagements financiers il existe d’abord les notations souveraines fournies par des agences de rating indépendantes, à titre d’exemple la note de la Tunisie a été abaissée à (BB-) avec perspective négative par Fitch le 31 Octobre 2013, à (B) avec perspective négative par S&P le 16 Aout 2013 et à (Ba2) par Moody’s le 30 Mai 2013, tous dans la catégorie spéculative de chaque système de notation. Malgré ces notes alarmantes, certaines parties et analystes du paysage médiatique tunisien ont demandé de relativiser l’indépendance et la crédibilité de ces agences et crié parfois à la théorie du complot.

Details: Written by: Issam Gargouri; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 25 November 2013

In this chart of the week we examine the relationship between business freedom and corruption. Both concepts are subject to a wide range of studies and intensive debates seeing their impact on the economic, social and political aspects of a given society. They have been quantitatively captured through two indices developed respectively by the Heritage Foundation and Transparency International non-governmental organizations. In fact, the heritage foundation has introduced, in cooperation with the Wall Street Journal and since 1995, the Business Freedom Index (BFI), a component of its global Index of Economic Freedom that covers 10 freedoms including the BFI. The higher the BFI, the easier the task of creating, operating and closing businesses.

Details: Written by: TUNESS Research Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 20 November 2013

We consider this week some of the institutional pre-requisites that are often found to increase the likelihood of consensus building. We start our study by running a logistic regression on key variables we consider of high importance in predicting the probability of reaching a compromise among various parties that are taking part in this national debate.

Details: Written by: TUNESS Research Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 11 November 2013

As the TUNESS fundraising team continues its campaign to collect funds to finance the school supplies for all pupils (from 1^st to 6^th grades) attending an elementary school located in a disadvantaged region of the northern part of Tunisia, this weekly note focuses on the serious problem of school dropouts. Research have shown school dropouts are very often among the most vulnerable population in terms of regular income and/or chances to access decent jobs. Moreover, a high percentage of prison population is frequently found to have records of unstable school attendance or misbehavior at early years of education. While an accurate estimate of the scope of this problem remains difficult to elaborate, some encouraging initiatives at both national and international levels have made to shed some light on this issue.

Details: Written by: Zied Driss & Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 24 July 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (06/17/2013)

As the final draft of the Tunisian constitution moves to the plenary session for discussion and final vote, we review this week one of the main controversial issue widely debated within the legislative branch and the civil society. What kind of prerogatives this new constitution should grant to the Executive head and to what extent his power should be counterbalanced by the legislative body? An extensive debate took place in the country over the last two years. The recent memories from the former totalitarian regime that governed the country have substantially shaped this debate. Not surprising to find that the consensus was rapidly reached among major political players that there should be no more unconstrained power granted to one person or one party in the absence of a solidly rooted checks and balances. Despite this consensus, the compromise on the demarcation of the political power of each branch is still to come. In this note, we review the question of the “optimal” split of power between the presidential and the legislative institutions fromone particular angle.

Details: Written by: TUNESS Research Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 17 June 2013

We review in this note many reports and studies that investigated the level and type of STI in Tunisia (and Africa overall) compared to other countries. Many indicators have been used to assess this construct such as Technology Achievement Index (TAI), UNIDO Competitive Industrial Performance Index (CIP), the Global Competitive Index (GCI) and the Knowledge Economy Index (KEI). All indicators correlate and highlight that African countries are far below other countries.

TAI is a composite index including the creation of technology, diffusion of recent innovations, diffusion of old innovations and human skills. One of our previous TCW focused on one sub-dimension “exports/imports” of R&D which is part of the diffusion of recent innovations. However, in this note we will assess, from a broader perspective, STI level and nature in Tunisia.

According to TAI (world average = 0.40), four segments of countries are grouped as follows:

Details: Written by: Nawel Amrouche; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 10 June 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week

(05/06/2013)

In this weekly note, we shed some light on the dynamic of the inflation rate in Tunisia. At first glance (figure 1), it seems that the inflation rate in Tunisia has constantly moved during the period under investigation within a range of 2 to 6 % with a peak during the year 1995 when the government adopted a series of economic policies to ensure greater openness of the Tunisian economy to the global market along with gradual liberalization of the domestic financial markets.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 03 June 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (27/05/2013)

In this weekly note, the Tunisian high technology exports (as a percentage of manufactured exports) are investigated. The high technology exports, a world bank indicator, is defined as all products with high research and development intensity, such as aerospace, computers, pharmaceuticals, scientific instruments, and electrical machinery. Being able to export high-tech products requires skilled employees (with high level of education and appropriate training) as well as decent level of international competitiveness to conquer new segments in the international market.

Details: Written by: Walid Missaoui; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 28 May 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday May 13, 2013

As the events in the Chaambi region continue to unfold, local population has discovered in an unequivocal manner how poorly equipped the military forces of the country are in the face of a domestic threat to its national security. Despite the genuine efforts and the heroic goodwill of the national troops to secure a very strategic zone of the national territory (bordering a contiguous and potentially unstable country) most attempts have failed so far to ensure a total control over this region. In this note, we shed some light on one and perhaps most important cause of this failure, that’s the absence of a clear political agenda to provide the adequate financial and logistic resources to the military forces to cope with any domestic or foreign threat.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 13 May 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday May 07, 2013

Unemployment is certainly one of the most worrying issues in Tunisia since the revolution. Although many people addressed this topic, few are those who have focused on its impact on women known to be heavier as opposed to men. In the following, we investigate the reasons behind the sensitivity of women's employment to economic shocks. In addition to the revolution of 2011, the Tunisian economy faced few other major events (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades (GATT ), market liberalization, privatization, the Multi Fiber Arrangement MFA) that affected strongly the sectors employing women.

Details: Written by: Mohamed Ben Salah; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 07 May 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday April 29, 2013

There is a saying among Tunisian youth which, over the years, has been widely endorsed by the young population that “there’s no opportunity for future decent job in the country regardless of whether or not you are an educated job seeker”. Along these lines, and while the above remains an anecdotal quote, it should come as no surprise that during the latest ousting protest of former president Ben Ali, protesters were forcefully claiming, among other things, their rights for a decent employment and acceptable living conditions. The aim of this note is to shed some light on the unemployment trend by educational attainment in Tunisia.

Details: Written by: Zied Driss; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 29 April 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday April 22, 2013

Like most emerging economies, Credit market in Tunisia continues to absorb the bulk of domestic financing needs from both public and private sectors. Despite several past attempts to boost the domestic capital market through successive waves of financial liberalization, the latter has failed to impose itself as a major player in the local financial market. As a result, credits are currently (by far) the major source for funding domestic investments and private consumption and thus the main driving force of the economic growth (at least at the aggregate level).

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 22 April 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday April 15, 2013

Continuous scientific efforts to identify the mechanisms responsible for the recent observed variations of the Earth's climate have led to further evidence that "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations" (IPCC 2007).

Details: Written by: Rym Msadek; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 15 April 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday April 08, 2013

Forecasting electric power consumption (EPC) is a crucial and essential activity to gauge electricity generation. The lack of a precise picture of the future may lead to over capacity or shortages in power that can cause unexpected high costs.The attempts conducted to achieve such prediction could be classified into three types of forecasting: short-term (few minutes to few hours), medium-term (few months to few years) and long-term (5 to 25 years in the future).

Details: Written by: Walid Missaoui; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 08 April 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday April 01, 2013

“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation”, JFK has once said. Using the recent survey conducted by the OECD we constructed the above dashboard to highlight the performance of certain education systems worldwide (75 countries) including Tunisia.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 01 April 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday March 25, 2013

We compiled a comparative analysis of the Foreign Direct investment (FDI) inflows to Tunisia and its neighboring and direct competitor countries in the Mediterranean region throughout the past four decades. FDIs are direct capital flows invested in the domestic production systems and businesses by an external party (e.g., multinational firms). While the positive impact of those capital flows on the long term growth of the economy are very often put forward in the literature and advocated by international organizations, recent experiences of developing countries have shown that such an impact can only be achieved in presence of prerequisite conditions in the country

Details: Written by: Zied Driss; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 25 March 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Monday March 18, 2013

As we commemorate the 40^th day since the assassination of the Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid, we study this week the political assassinations of ruling or opposition leaders in the world which have been a recurring event throughout past decades and have very often changed the course of history or reshaped the political scene in the country or the region where it occurred. Overall, our findings as we explain below, confirm the empirical results of past contributions in the literature and reiterate the idea that given the current circumstances, Tunisia remains highly vulnerable to those kind of unlawful acts.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 18 March 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), March 11, 2013

The philosopher Antonio Negri characterizes “information society“ as one in which people do immaterial labor. In fact, “ information society”, a concept that emerged starting from the seventies, was introduced by theorists to capture the transformations the modern societies have been witnessing due to technological advancements, in particular, the fluency and ease with which information is being created , distributed, used, integrated and manipulated. The question that this note is trying to address is “to what extent could Tunisia be considered an information society? “.

Details: Written by: Walid Missaoui; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 11 March 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Mar 01, 2013

The answer is quite inaccurate! Although most polls accurately predicted that Ennahdha will do well, most predicted less than 30% of the votes and most forecasts ranged in the 20%-25%. The predictions for the PDP were very inflated (average polls 13% vs. 3.9% actual results). CPR was quite under-forecasted (5% average across polls vs 8.7% actual at the elections) while Al Aridha was totally missed by the polls

Details: Written by: Tuness Team; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 01 March 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Feb 22, 2013

Beyond the present political instability and the security issues that have recently hampered the economic conditions in the region, we focus this week on some key indicators of the business environment that play a major role in shaping the confidence of internal and external investors. We study a sample of countries composed of Tunisia and other countries of the region that, considering their geographical locations, remain Tunisia’s direct competitors to attract foreign investments and external capital flows in the international markets.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 22 February 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Feb 15, 2013

This note sheds light on renewable sources used for electricity production in Tunisia during the first decade of the twentieth century. Alternative green sources for electricity harnessing are solar, wind, hydropower and biomass & biofuel. Hydropower for electricity generation or hydroelectricity consists of producing electrical power through the use of gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy in the world. Comparing to the other forms of renewable energies, the cost of hydroelectricity is relatively low. An accurate assessment of the investment in "green" electricity production should look separately into hydroelectricity source and other renewable sources.

Details: Written by: Walid Missaoui; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 15 February 2013

Read more: How Green is Tunisia?

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Feb 8, 2013

External debt is defined as the portion of the gross (total) debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. It consists of two main components: long-term debt and short-term debt. The long-term debt is the sum of the private non-guaranteed (PNG) and the public & publicly guaranteed (PPG) debts.

Details: Written by: Walid Missaoui; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 08 February 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Feb 01, 2013

Clean air is essential to human life. Developed countries have been making significant investments and have been implementing strategies to keep pollution and contaminants under control. While air pollution cannot be summarized into a single value, the particulate matter (PM) remains one of the key measured, monitored and reported pollutant that has short and long term effect on the respiratory system. Particulate matter plays the role of carrier for pathogens - disease causing micro-organism such as Virus, Bacteria, and Fungi.

Details: Written by: Zied Driss; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 01 February 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Jan 25, 2013

As the fundamentals of the labor market in Tunisia continue to deteriorate, we study this week one of its main indicators, that’s the worker productivity. This index, often proxied by the GDP over the total number of active employees remains quite informative to assess the efficiency of the factors of production used by economy to generate its final output. The Tunisian labor force , like most other employees across the Arab world has been empirically found in past studies to have a moderate productivity level.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 25 January 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Jan 18, 2013

Few will argue today with the idea that one of the main aspirations of the Tunisian young population when they marched on the street during the revolution was to demand equal rights for all and fight the discrimination against the most fragile and marginalized classes. Women and workers have always been among those classes. Today two years have passed, and despite this unequivocal call for the consolidation of the rights of those groups, minor improvements were made in this area. Why? Simply because we have been struggling to build a new house with little attention, if any, paid to the robustness of its pillars.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 18 January 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Jan 11, 2013

The Tunisian banking sector has witnessed successive waves of liberalization starting from mid 1990’s with a noticeable acceleration throughout the last decade. This deliberate policy to increase the competitiveness of this sector by exposing its main actors to foreign players and to provide them with more flexibility in terms of establishing the terms of their credit allocation policy was also accompanied by some regulatory measures (prudential regulation) aiming at reducing any incentive for excessive risk taking

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 11 January 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Jan 04, 2013

We examine the impact of the Arab Spring on people's wallet and on the inflation trend . In accordance with the conventional wisdom, inflation has trended upward in the post revolution period for almost all Arab countries (except Egypt). Our 'Control' group included Morocco which experienced milder unrest. As expected, the increased cost of living is more pronounced in countries where the conflict and unrest were more violent and longer (Syria, Libya, and Yemen) compared to countries where the revolutions were shorter (Tunisia, Egypt).

Details: Written by: Moez Hababou; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 04 January 2013

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Dec 28, 2012

The Industrial Production Index is widely used among scholars and policy makers to assess the economic prosperity of the country. Broadly speaking, this index measures the changes in the volume of the domestic output produced by the most important economic sectors in a given country (e.g., Mining, Manufacturing, Electrical energy...).

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 28 December 2012

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Dec 21, 2012

As we commemorate the second anniversary of the Tunisian resolution, we take a closer look at what was back then one of the main aspirations of the population, that’s a fair and equitable income distribution.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 21 December 2012

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Dec 14, 2012

The two plotted measures of poverty ((a) the impact of poverty, calculated as the % of the population below the poverty line and, (b) the scope of poverty measuring the gap between actual expenditures of poor population and the poverty threshold)* provide yet another candid explanation of the last popular uprising that started in Tunisia in December 2010.

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 10 December 2012

TUNESS Chart of the Week (TCW), Friday Dec 7, 2012 How powerful is the UGTT relative to its peers?

The Labor Union Power Index measuring the power of unions as the average of indicators such as (the right of employees to unionize and negotiate collective bargaining; the possibility for the Union to close shops; and their ability to appoint members to the Boards of Directors,..) shows that while the Tunisian Labor Union (UGTT) seems to have a stronger position relative its peers in similar countries of the region

Details: Written by: Bechir Bouzid; Category: TUNESS Chart of The Week; Published: 07 December 2012