Energy Subsidies and the Path Toward Sustainable Reform in the Arab Republic of Egypt

Banerjee, Sudeshna Ghosh; El-Laithy, Heba; Griffin, P.B.; Clarke, Kieran; Hallouda, Mohab M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-52926-4_6

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Such policies are like "painful surgeries," but the sooner they are done, the better. For instance, energy subsidy reforms can increase commodity prices, hit the poor the hardest, and lead to popular discontent and protest, fueling political instabilities 72 . This would make the sustainability transformation politically and socially unappealing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Balancing national economic policy outcomes for sustainable development

et al. 2022

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The 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim at jointly improving economic, social, and environmental outcomes for human prosperity and planetary health. However, designing national economic policies that support advancement across multiple Sustainable Development Goals is hindered by the complexities of multi-sector economies and often conflicting policies. To address this, we introduce a national-scale design framework that can enable policymakers to sift through complex, non-linear, multi-sector policy spaces to identify efficient policy portfolios that balance economic, social, and environmental goals. The framework combines economy-wide sustainability simulation and artificial intelligence-driven multiobjective, multi-SDG policy search and machine learning. The framework can support multi-sector, multi-actor policy deliberation to screen efficient policy portfolios. We demonstrate the utility of the framework for a case study of Egypt by identifying policy portfolios that achieve efficient mixes of poverty and inequality reduction, economic growth, and climate change mitigation. The results show that integrated policy strategies can help achieve sustainable development while balancing adverse economic, social, and political impacts of reforms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Balancing national economic policy outcomes for sustainable development

et al. 2022

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“…I focus on the impact of electricity prices. Electricity takes the largest share (50 percent) of the Egyptian household's energy bill (Banerjee et al, 2017). Exposure to electricity price shocks, thus, can offer a good assessment of citizens' vulnerability to the reforms.…”

Section: Probing Causality: Price Shocks and Ramadanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This clarity of responsibility is critical, knowing that the reforms were unpopular among several societal groups: low and middle-income classes, leftists, and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers. A household survey conducted before the implementation of the reforms reports that two-thirds of respondents believed that energy prices were already high and about 80 percent of respondents stated that they could afford a maximum of 5 percent increase in their energy bill (Banerjee et al, 2017). Therefore, exposure to electricity price shocks can provide a proxy for the level of political discontent and threat.…”

Section: Probing Causality: Price Shocks and Ramadanmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious Cycles of Government Responsiveness: Why Governments Distribute in Ramadan

Mohamed

2021

Preprint

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In many Muslim societies, autocrats expand their distributive policies in the religious season of Ramadan. Why do autocrats distribute in Ramadan? And, who do they target? Focusing on Egypt (2014-2020), this paper argues that the regime distributes in Ramadan to contain political threats to its survival by co-opting areas where such threats are more credible. I test this argument using an original municipality-level dataset of government-reported provision of economic benefits. The findings show that the government reports more economic distribution in places where political threats are higher: more socioeconomically developed, more contentious, and more affected by unpopular austerity measures. Using survey data, I also find that distribution in Ramadan translates into reputational gains for the regime, particularly among its critics. The conclusions suggest that autocrats might adopt multiple targeting strategies to respond to different threats to their survival, sometimes rewarding threatening groups to buy their acquiescence.

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“…In Egypt, several studies estimated the potential impact of energy subsidy reform. Griffin, Laursen, and Robertson (2016) and Banerjee et al (2017) used dynamic computable general equilibrium (DCGE) models and found that the impact of the energy subsidy cut in July 2014 should lead to only a modest decline in real household consumption and only a slight increase in poverty in the short-term, while resulting in sizeable structural change in the economy and increase in economic growth in the longer term. Since these two studies for Egypt were conducted, the GOE has scaled up its economic reform agenda significantly by floating the exchange rate and by further cutting energy subsidies.…”

Section: Global Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%