Questions for Class 12: Feb 23-25, 2010
1. What indicators may help us compare the "state of reform" or degree to which a country has undergone structural adjustment and adapted to the global economy? In your syllabus you will find the 2009 World Bank report on the MENA with its statistical tables. The WB has also published a more recent Doing Business 2010 report on the MENA.
2. What sorts of "reform of the state" are needed and how may we measure the progress of reform - along which sorts of indicators? (Here is a web site devoted to good governance: the UNDP Oslo Governance Center - with their list of sets of indicators and a progress report about developing lists of indicators. All of which leads me to a World Bank site on indicators of governance...and here is a "user friendly" WB site on their six governance indicators.
3. What is "Contract-Intensive Money" and what significance does it have for understanding political economies in the region?
Definition: CIM = (M2-Cash)/M2
4. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of business oligopolies controlling private sectors of some of the MENA economies - how do they compare with state planning agencies?
5. What is crony capitalism and which types of political economy in the MENA are especially prone to it?
6. Is the "freedom deficit" the principal culprit preventing Arab countries (and Iran, too, for the matter) from living up to their full potential for assimilated, applying, and developing new technologies for their economic development?