Abstract
High unemployment rates in MENA appear to be structural in nature and result from the significant segmentation of the region’s economies along formal-informal and public-private lines. It thus appears at first that Christopher’s Pissarides’ seminal contribution on the search theoretic underpinnings of unemployment are less relevant than a Harris-Todaro-type dual economy model. Nevertheless, I argue in this essay that Pissarides’ search theoretic framework is becoming increasingly relevant as the role of public sectors in the labor market is gradually attenuated.