This article examines the growth in mobile phone-based lending Kenya, where millions now borrow from services that translate digital data into credit scores. Reeling ongoing retrenchment and marketisation, many find themselves turning to expensive, short-term “buy time”. We depart actuarial approaches economy foreground technical analysis of order emphasise importance racialised expropriation r...

having a rentier economy dependent on natural gas exports, turkmenistan was administered as a dictatorship under saparmurat niyazov after it gained independence from the soviet :union:. it also pursued a foreign policy based on non-participation in any international alliance and pact. this paper studies turkmenistan's domestic and foreign policies under his successor president berdimuhamed...

The resource curse literature suggests that, in fragile states dependent on natural rents, structures of public accountability are weak because an elite-controlled political economy indifferent to social and ecological interests. We examine claims made by non-domestic proxy actors, holding governments corporations accountable behalf communities adversely affected resources extraction. This conc...

Abstract:Oil is undoubtedly the most important, and at the same time, the most politico-economic commodity in today’s world. As the most important source of economic and political power, oil has constantly played a significant role for Iranian governments both before and after the revolution [1979], and has served as a major fuel for their economic power. However, historical experience in...

In this paper we revisit the Dutch disease paying particular attention to the role of specific factors of production and capital stock dynamics. The main insight is that if the natural resource rich windfall is substantial but not large enough for the country to become a rentier, capital goods must be produced at home and adjustment to natural resource windfall takes time. It takes time to buil...

This paper studies the postwar economic and political reconstruction in Lebanon. The paper shows that the ‘reconstruction boom’ was short-lived. The economy experienced a growth trap early in the reconstruction period, and entered a cyclical crisis in 1998 which resulted from an ill-designed fiscal-monetary policy mix. The expansionary fiscal policy resulting from the high resource demands – du...