Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) have a significant role in filling the gap between the formal financial institutions and the poor people. This study aims at estimating the interaction between outreach and financial sustainability in MENA countries. The study examines 82 MFIs for 2004–2018, ends up with 133 observations. A panel data technique is employed for model specification. Our findings confirm a trade-off between financial sustainability and outreach performance by MFIs in MENA countries, and we recommend that MFIs must take care of the management of financial ratios, such as ROA, ROE and OSS and performance, to achieve financial sustainability and outreach.

This paper aims to explain how to use the generalized method of moments (GMM) analysis technique to estimate the relationship between the gender wage gap and economic development for unbalanced panel data for OECD countries during the period 2011–2021. The results show that an increase of 1% in wage inequality between the two genders leads to a 0.013% decrease in economic development in the case of the OECD. The relationship is statistically significant at 1% which is consistent with previous studies.

Political stability can’t be isolated anymore from economic issues. In fact, political events became one of the important determinant for many economic phenomena especially in MENA countries. This study aims to test the effect of fragility growth on foreign direct investment growth in 13 of MENA countries from 2007 to 2018. The study employs cointegration test and vector error correction models (VECM) to examine both long-run and short-run causality relationships between the FDI growth and the economic variables (Fragility growth, Openness growth and GDP growth). The panel VECM results suggest that there is a long run causal relationships that show a significant influence of fragility growth, GDP growth and openness growth on the FDI growth. The effect from fragility to FDI estimated to be 22%, and more than 40% of disequilibrium in FDI produced by fragility will corrected annually. This study will help policy-makers in assessing and managing the economic risks they face, which in turn will increase FDI flows and contribute to increasing the country’s economic growth and stability.