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Migration has traditionally been used as a survival strategy in times of financial crisis; however, a debate exists as to whether migration influences poverty on the individual level. The current study analyses the influence of past subjective poverty on migration choice and to determine the impact of migration on current subjective poverty perception. Using a simultaneous bivariate ordered probit model, we found that poorer individuals in Egypt tend to migrate more than others. Migration was found to be a significant determinant of current poverty in Egypt. Finally, migration improved migrant’s financial situation.

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The Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) model of border-located, duty and quota-free industrial regions is a policy tool designed to capitalize on cross-border cooperation to facilitate post-conflict normalization. Using mixed methods, this study presents and evaluates the implementation of the 1996 US initiated Israel-Jordan QIZ agreement and its social, economic and political impact, contributing to broader debates regarding the potential and limitations of post-conflict normalization through trade preference agreements. The Israel-Jordan QIZ framework no longer functions due to multiple circumstances. Yet there are lessons to be gained from the mechanisms of the QIZ implementation which contributed to the only minimal realization of its anticipated potential. We found that economic brokerage fostering trade and industry cross-border cooperation can serve one-sided economic interests while minimizing spillover to political or social realms, contrary to original intentions. The QIZ experience demonstrates the importance of self-motivation of each of the parties regarding specific cooperative ventures in realizing the potential of cross-border cooperation.

Trade and economic cooperation are often promoted through policy to facilitate post-conflict normalization. The Qualified Industrial Zone (QIZ) model of duty and quota-free industrial regions is a policy tool initiated by the United States as a brokerage in promoting peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Indeed, a vast literature aims to evaluate the economic and political potential of trade liberalization. Yet the mechanisms of trade policy implementation in a post-conflict environment, its timing and underlying political motives, are critical but rather neglected factors, which design the prospects of trade incentives. We therefore question the effectiveness of the QIZ as a tool addressing post-conflict dynamics and ask whether its impact on Israel–Egyptian relations reflects the value of this policy or the circumstances of its implementation. Using mixed methods, this study presents and evaluates the implementation of the QIZ in Egypt since 2004 and its results, both economic and political, fine tuning the broader debate to focus on circumstances of implementation. This case study demonstrates the results of trade opportunity implementation as a reaction to threat rather than mobilization to realize post-conflict rapprochement or even to reap economic opportunity. Notwithstanding the forces of globalization, Egypt’s pre and post-revolutionary internal political economy and delicate relations with Israel serve as the context for understanding the QIZ. This context facilitates contradicting political interpretations, with the QIZ simultaneously celebrated as an economic success, criticized as an Egyptian escape route from structural reforms, and accused as embodying a U.S.–Egyptian elite conspiracy, to coerce Egyptian economic normalization with Israel.