caa a22 4500 378857665 CHVBK 20180305123338.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e20030101xx s 000 0 eng 10.2202/1475-3693.1004 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.2202/1475-3693.1004 Hakimian Hassan Cass Business School, H.Hakimian@city.ac.uk Water Scarcity and Food Imports: An Emperical Investigation of the 'Virtual Water' Hypothesis in the MENA Region [Elektronische Daten] [Hassan Hakimian] Despite the long tradition established by the Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) theorem and copious literature on the so-called Leontief Paradox, economists have not methodically linked the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region's well-known water-scarcity problem to its mounting food imports. This paper first reinterprets the factor endowments and comparative advantage theory in the MENA context, suggesting that the 'virtual water' (VW) hypothesis, focusing on water embedded in commodities, is in line with the H-O model's tenet that 'trade in commodities is an indirect way of trade in factors of production'. Second, findings using comparative cross-section regression analysis for 100 countries appear to vindicate the VW hypothesis that the import structures for water-deficit areas are dominated by large food/agricultural imports. The study ends with a discussion of the policy and political economy implications of the hypothesis in the light of our empirical findings. ©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston JEL Classification: F10 nationallicence Review of Middle East Economics and Finance De Gruyter 1/1(2003-01-01), 70-84 1:1<70 2003 1 rmeef https://doi.org/10.2202/1475-3693.1004 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2202/1475-3693.1004 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Hakimian Hassan Cass Business School, H.Hakimian@city.ac.uk NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Review of Middle East Economics and Finance De Gruyter 1/1(2003-01-01), 70-84 1:1<70 2003 1 rmeef CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter