MENA Workshop

A workshop on the political economy of oil revenue management in the MENA (Middle East - North Africa) region was held at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies on Wednesday 10th December 2008. It was co-sponsored by the ESRC's World Economy and Finance Research Programme and was organized as part of the "Oxford University Natural Resources Jamboree", which also included the second annual conference of the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource-Rich Economies (OxCarre).

The workshop was attended by more than 50 participants from Europe, North America, and Africa with interests in the relationship between natural resources and economic development. Participants represented a wide range of institutions and backgrounds and included university professors, senior economists at the World Bank and IMF, and members of think tanks, civil society organizations and national governments. Written papers were presented and will be available upon request.

The workshop generated useful discussions on the special challenges facing resource rich economies of the Middle East and North Africa. Separate sessions were dedicated to the analysis of trends in the global supply and demand of oil prices, fiscal aspects in the deployment of oil revenues, structural issues of labour markets and economic reform, and the impact of oil on domestic politics of the Middle East. The workshop is part of the Centre's growing interest in promoting scholarship on economic development in the Middle East in collaboration with scholars in Oxford and beyond.