LIS signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Economic Research Forum (ERF)
In our quest to establish closer collaboration with regional and international organizations, to promote cross-national comparative research on socio-economic outcomes and on the institutional factors that shape those outcomes, this March LIS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Economic Research Forum (ERF). The ERF is a regional network dedicated to promoting high quality economic research to contribute to sustainable development in the Arab countries, Iran and Turkey.
Both the ERF- via its Open Access Micro Data Initiative (OAMDI) – and LIS contribute to the research community by providing researchers with access to comparable and harmonized Micro datasets with common denominator of the income and expenditure measures, to promote academic research on inequality and poverty and development/evaluation of evidence-based policies. The collaboration between the two institutions is ultimately intended to benefit the research community and both institutions’ users to achieve the following:
- Producing and disseminating research on social problems created by inequality/poverty/unemployment in a cross-country comparative perspective and/or along a temporal dimension.
- Promoting awareness of the micro-consequences of macro phenomena, through the diffusion of statistical information on inequality/poverty/unemployment.
- Promoting the advancement of the use of microdata in academic analysis and evidence-based policies
- Promoting cross-country comparisons of MENA region and countries available in LIS, with particular focus of countries on the two sides of the Mediterranean.
- Promoting knowledge of participating countries via remote access to microdata on income/wealth/labour market participation.
During the course of two years, the initial term of the MOU, the prospective collaboration will mainly entail producing and sharing comparable LIS/ERF key figures, and promoting research based on the ERF Harmonized Household Surveys and LIS/LWS databases, through launching a joint call for proposals/papers on Inequality in the Mediterranean Region.