Hala Abou-Ali is an Associate Professor and the director of the French Section at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University, Egypt, and a Research Fellow at the Economic Research Forum with a B.Sc. (with first honor) in Statistics from Cairo University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Gothenburg University, Sweden. She recently edited Economic incentives and environmental regulation: evidence from the MENA region (Edward Elgar 2012). She joined the Economic Research Forum in 2008 on a part time basis to take the lead on the work carried out on environmental economics in the MENA region. Starting 2014, Abou-Ali is leading the Open Access Micro Data Initiative (OAMDI) for the MENA region. Her fields of specialization are in the areas of environmental and development economics. She has accumulated experience in the economic value and modeling of environmental resources in developing countries, with a particular focus on water and air pollution and agricultural land degradation. She has also worked on issues such as impact evaluation of investments, poverty assessment and the Millennium Development Goals for the World Bank and the UNDP.