ABSTRACT
Over the past decades, an issue of great concern has been the integration of Middle East and North Africa countries (MENA in the acronym introduced by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). In the widest definition, MENA encompasses the 21 members of the Arab League and Iran, Israel, and Turkey, which is hardly a homogeneous region, as El-Erian and Fischer questioned (2000). Recently, Devlin (2010) asks whether MENA countries are different from other developing countries, noting the diversity within the region, with striking and growing differences between the Gulf countries and the rest of the MENA countries. The Mediterranean MENA countries are a better-defined group, according to signers of the so-called Barcelona Process.
