Adeel Malik

University of Oxford | OX · Oxford Department of International Development (QEH)

This book broaches an important new intellectual frontier that recognizes Gulf political economy as co-constituted with global power structures, involving both financial and military control by dominant Western states. Revisiting the myriad financial and economic connections of Gulf countries between Western powers and regional Arab states, it show...

Although borderland regions of the Middle East and North Africa represent active sights of economic and social exchange, they remain peripheral to the analysis of the region’s political economy. Conventional accounts of cross-border informal trade tend to emphasize its illegality based on existing economic regulations, overlooking the deep politica...

The popular uprisings in 2011 that overthrew Arab dictators were also a rebuke to crony capitalism, targeted against both rulers and their allied businessmen who had monopolize profitable economic opportunities. While the Middle East has witnessed a growing nexus between business and politics in the wake of economic liberalization, little is known...

The popular Arab uprisings in 2011 that overthrew dictators in North Africa (which became known as “the Arab Spring”) were not just a revolt against dictatorships. They were also a rebuke to crony capitalism—against insider businessmen who were connected to the ruling circle and ended up monopolizing all economic opportunities. As the curtain of au...

This paper offers a novel illustration of the political economy of religion and development by empirically examining the impact of religious shrines on development. Compiling a unique database covering the universe of holy Muslim shrines across Pakistani Punjab, we show that historically embedded religious power shapes persistent differences in lit...

This article provides a first systematic mapping of politically influential shrines across Pakistani Punjab by identifying shrine-related families that have directly participated in elections since 1937. One of the earliest entrants in the politics of pre-partition Punjab, shrine elites ( pīrs ) have shown remarkable persistence in electoral politi...

The Middle Eastern political economy has long been studied through the prism of the resource curse—that is, how resource riches undermine the region’s economic and political development. While many of the region’s pathologies are rooted in an economic structure heavily reliant on external windfalls, the existing literature tends to overstate the ro...

This chapter offers a brief critical reflection on the Middle East’s resource curse. The region has typically been described as performing in the middling range, growing neither as well as East Asia nor as badly as sub-Saharan Africa. Arab economies have experienced a modest growth performance with substantial volatility of macroeconomic outcomes....

Trade openness can affect inflation volatility via the incentives faced by policy-makers or the structure of production and consumption, but the sign of this effect, as predicted from economic theory, is ambiguous. This paper provides evidence for a negative effect of openness on inflation volatility using a dynamic panel model that controls for th...

This note describes the political challenge of economic diversification in the Arab world, and is based on a speech delivered at a conference in Beirut organized by the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies and Natural Resources Governance Institute.

Compiling a unique database covering the universe of shrines across Pakistani Punjab, the authors explore whether the presence of holy Muslim shrines helps to explain regional variation in literacy rates. Results demonstrate that the presence of shrines adversely affects literacy only in regions where shrine-related families have a direct political...

This article frames the political economy of the 2011 Arab uprisings as a failure of the Arab development model, especially its inability to support an independent and competitive private sector. Based on a distorted legacy of intervention and distribution, this development model is structurally incapable of reconciling aspirations with economic op...

This article frames the political economy of the 2011 Arab uprisings as a failure of the Arab development model, especially its inability to support an independent and competitive private sector. Based on a distorted legacy of intervention and distribution, this development model is structurally incapable of reconciling aspirations with economic op...

This article situates recent political turbulence in the Middle East within the long-term failure of the Arab development model that is based on economic controls and welfare concessions. After having sustained generous welfare entitlements for several decades, this development model is coming under increasing strains in the face of a growing and i...

Islamic economic thought and finance are rooted in Islamic ethics. Their ideals and means are not, however, exclusive to Islam. The principles of Islamic finance emphasize market-based risk-sharing modes of financing that promote assets and enterprise, deploy finance in service of the real economy, and facilitate redistribution of wealth and opport...

An influential thesis [Kuran, 2011, The Long Divergence] locates the economic failure of the Middle East in Islamic legal arrangements that laid the basis for organizational deficiencies. This article critically scrutinizes this thesis using the lens of political economy and argues that tracing the impact of Islamic law without a discussion of the...

This article explores the economic underpinnings of the Arab spring. We locate the roots of the regiosn's long-term economic failure in a statist model of development that is financed through external windfalls and rests on inefficient forms of intervention and redistribution. We argue that the rising cost of repression and redistribution is callin...

We present cross-country empirical evidence on the role of natural resources in explaining long-run differences in private investment as a share of GDP in a sample of 78 developing countries. Our empirical results suggest important differences between fossil fuels and non-fuel resources. While significant fuel exports tend to increase private (and...

Private industrial development inPakistan has a mixed track record. This paper presents a political economy overview of industrial development in Pakistan. Starting with an analysis of initial conditions, such as low levels of urbanization and out-migration of bourgeoisie, the paper looks at the ways in which policies were used to create advantages...

If oil lies at the core of Nigeria’s economic and political problems, a vibrant manufacturing sector is part of the solution. In analysing Nigeria’s economic challenges, the buck often stops at the manufacturing sector, since its role remains central to any attempt at reducing oil dependence and promoting economic diversification. Previous chapters...

This paper examines the structural determinants of output volatility in developing countries, and especially the roles of geography and institutions. We investigate the volatility effects of market access, climate variability, the geographic predisposition to trade, and various measures of institutional quality. We find an especially important role...

Over the past decade, the World Bank has consistently emphasized the importance of reducing poverty and improving the delivery of basic social services in Pakistan. Indeed, its resolve to do just that is evident in dozens of official and unofficial studies and assessments, in the Bank’s country assistance strategies, and in the content of its loans...

Recent decades have seen a considerable expansion of global trade and a simultaneous decline in inflation volatility. This paper investigates whether greater openness to trade helps achieve inflation stability. Using panel data for a sample of developing and industrial countries over the period 1961-2000, we document a negative and statistically si...

Trade openness can reduce inflation volatility through limiting recourse to seigniorage during periods of temporary fiscal deficits, and by shifting consumption and production towards goods for which the terms of trade are relatively stable. This paper provides evidence for a negative effect of openness on inflation volatility using a dynamic panel...

We present empirical evidence on factors that explain long run differences in investment as a share of GDP in a sample of 61 developing countries. We find robust positive effects from measures of the quality of political institutions and public sector infrastructure provision, and robust negative effects from measures of natural resource endowments...