Ayman Tibi

Research

• Conditional Trade Policy for Peace? The Economic Effects of Qualifying Industrial Zones in the Middle East
  Abstract

  Countries may use trade agreements to strengthen relations among allies and advance geopolitical interests. In this paper, I study the U.S.-fostered Qualifying Industrial Zones agreement, which grants Egyptian and Jordanian firms in designated zones duty-free access to the U.S. market conditional on sourcing a fixed share of inputs from Israel. Using firm-level customs data, industrial census records, and labor force surveys, I find that the agreement generated large and persistent gains in exports, firm productivity, and wages, driven primarily by preferential access to the U.S. market rather than by improvements in the quality of Israeli inputs. To evaluate the role of the input requirement, I develop a heterogeneous-firm trade model in which firms endogenously choose whether to participate in the QIZ program by satisfying the sourcing rule and whether to upgrade productivity. The model shows that lowering the Israeli input requirement can increase both Egyptian welfare and imports from Israel by inducing broader firm participation, thereby advancing the U.S. objective of deepening regional trade while improving economic outcomes in Egypt. I calibrate the model to Egypt and show that the agreement led to a decrease in welfare driven by crowding out of non-QIZ economic industries. Lowering the input requirement increases participation by other industries and hence increases welfare.

• From Code to Factory Floor: Software Parks and Manufacturing in India
  With Tanay Agrawal
  Abstract

  This project studies whether the expansion of Software Technology Parks in India, introduced to promote IT and software exports, generated spillovers to the manufacturing sector. The question speaks to broader debates on services-led growth, premature deindustrialization, and whether productivity gains in tradable services can complement, rather than displace, manufacturing in developing economies. We first show that the parks generated a large productivity shock in the IT sector in treated municipalities, relative to municipalities where a park was planned but not ultimately established. We then document that this shock produced positive spillovers to manufacturing, increasing manufacturing employment in affected municipalities. Guided by a model, we show that positive spillovers to manufacturing arise only when the benefits of stronger local demand and improved intermediate inputs outweigh the negative effects of labor-market crowding out. Our results point to strong demand effects and some evidence of input-output linkages. To better understand the mechanisms and broader equilibrium implications, we plan to quantify a model capturing how services productivity shocks transmit to manufacturing outcomes, and whether this transmission can be reconciled with aggregate patterns of structural transformation.

• The Political Economy of Newspaper Funding in India
  With Pooja Singh
  Abstract

  This project studies how incumbent governments in India choose to advertise in newspapers and whether this spending is used strategically to influence electoral outcomes.

• Public Investments and Conflict (Draft Soon)
  With Ayah Bohsali
  Abstract

  We study how conflict shapes the Nigerian government's allocation of public investment across locations and sectors.Using novel data on federal procurement contracts and constituency-level capital projects scraped from Nigerian government portals, and an instrumental variable strategy exploiting distance-weighted spillovers of conflict from neighboring countries, we uncover three facts. First, that public investment decreases with the onset of conflict. Second, that conditional on conflict occurring, it is increasing in the frequency of conflict events. Third, we show that these increases are concentrated in investment in physical infrastructure. The findings point to governments' strategic reaction to conflict through investment allocation.

Teaching

• Teaching Assistant, Advanced Microeconomics (Master Level)
  University of Mannheim, [2023, 2024, 2025]
• Grading Assistant, Leadership and Motivation (Master Level Business Course)
  University of Mannheim, 2025

Data and Code

• Newly Digitized Data on Egypt’s Manufacturing Sectors by Region (2002–2021)
  Coming soon: a publicly available dataset on Egypt’s manufacturing sector, at the 2- or 4-digit level, by governorate and year. Variables include the number of employees by gender, number of firms, wages, production, revenue, and value added.

Other Writings

• Arab development has a high cost... and this is what our countries ignore! (in Arabic)
  180 Post, 2024
• Can Lebanon follow Romania's suit and develop its IT sector? (in Arabic)
  180 Post, 2024

CV

You can download my curriculum vitae here.