Economics Resource Center: Political Economy

This book offers the first critical engagement with the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. Challenging conventional wisdom on the origins and contemporary dynamics of capitalism in the region, these cutting-edge essays demonstrate how critical political economy can illuminate both historical and contemporary dynamics of the region and contribute to wider political economy debates from the vantage point of the Middle East.

Following the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, the oil price decline represented a second major shock for the region in the early twenty-first century - one that has continued to impose constraints, but also provided opportunities. Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline, this book connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes.

In this unique text, Mohamed Ramady develops a framework for studying fundamental challenges to the modern Saudi Arabian economy. The author offers an analysis of key challenges facing the Saudi economy, including the potential costs and benefits of privatization, globalization, and eventual membership in the WTO. Employment, education, economic and social stability, and Saudi Arabia's place in the Gulf Cooperation Council are offered as keys to the consensus building needed to ensure the Kingdom's healthy economic future.

In this book leading Middle East scholar Robert Springborg discusses the economic future of this region by examining the national and regional political causes of its contemporary underperformance.

This book analyzes the political obstacles to economic recovery, and the economic consequences of democratic political reforms. The contributors focus on rulers of shaky states where civil strife has caused economic devastation. If rebuilding requires regime change, are we asking these governments to put themselves out of business?

This book addresses the political Instability and its effects on the economics of the MENA countries. It also covers economic growth, brain drain, capital controls, corruption, economic reform, economic shocks, uncertainty, vulnerability, economics inequality, FDI flows, corruption, financial crises, terrorism, stock market crashes/crises, poverty, sustainability, and tourism.

While defending capitalism against its unfair demonization, the author makes a positive case for entrepreneurial capitalism, which creates wealth and jobs as well as drives human progress. According to the author, reforming the financial industry, which has become a self-serving leviathan, and more fundamentally, tweaking the economic role of the government, which stifles growth-promoting entrepreneurship, are critical to restoring the vitality of capitalism.

A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual history and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians and scholars for half a century. Originally published in 1944, it was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

The book argues that the most effective way to pursue and protect U.S. interests is unlikely to involve the same alliance-centric approach that has been the basis of Washington's policy since the 1990s. Instead, the United States should adopt a nimbler and less military-dominant strategy that relies on a diversified set of partners and a determination to establish priorities for American interests and the use of resources, both financial and military

For nearly two decades, the United States devoted more than $2 billion towards democracy promotion in the Middle East with seemingly little impact. To understand the limited impact of this aid and the decision of authoritarian regimes to allow democracy programs whose ultimate aim is to challenge the power of such regimes, Marketing Democracy examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco, two of the highest recipients of US democracy aid in the region.

A Political Economy of the Middle East is the most comprehensive analysis of developments in the political economy of the region over the past several decades, examining the interaction of economic development processes, state systems and policies, and social actors in the Middle East.

This book questions the stereotype depicting all Gulf (GCC) economies as not sustainable, and starts a critical discussion of what these economies and polities should do to guarantee themselves a relatively stable future.

What determines the size and form of redistributive programs, the extent and type of public goods provision, the burden of taxation across alternative tax bases, the size of government deficits, and the stance of monetary policy during the course of business and electoral cycles? A large and rapidly growing literature in political economics attempts to answer these questions. But so far there is little consensus on the answers and disagreement on the appropriate mode of analysis.

How can property rights be protected and contracts be enforced in countries where the rule of law is ineffective or absent? How can firms from advanced market economies do business in such circumstances? In Lawlessness and Economics, Avinash Dixit examines the theory of private institutions that transcend or supplement weak economic governance from the state.

In the classic bestseller, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism--the organization of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market--as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.