This person is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Riad al Khouri is an economist specializing in the Middle East and North Africa region. He has undertaken extensive research on regional trade and political economy, among other topics, and writes widely about development issues. He taught economics at the American University in Beirut (AUB) and Beirut University College (now the Lebanese American University) and worked as a consultant for the European Commission, ESCWA, GTZ, ILO, IOM, OPEC Fund, UNDP, UNIDO, USAID, and the World Bank, among many other public sector organizations, as well as for numerous private firms.
Selected Publications: Trade Policies in Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia ( World Bank/ERF, Washington and Cairo 2000); Jordanian-Syrian Economic Relations (Arab Bank, Geneva 2001); Qualifying Industrial Zones (Royal Scientific Society, Amman 2002); Copyright Industries in Jordan (WIPO, Geneva 2004); Arab Migration Patterns: the Mashreq (IOM/League of Arab States, Geneva and Cairo 2004); Arab Mashreq Migration and Labor Market Segmentation (IOM, Geneva 2005); The Future of Democracy in Lebanon (Complutense U, Madrid 2006); National Security Issues in Euro-Med and US FTA Agreements in the Middle East (St. Gallen U, St. Gallen 2007)
Kuwait remains a classic rentier state, living on natural resources alone and unwilling or unable to diversify, reform, democratize, or otherwise change for the better. If anything, the emirate should be wallowing deeper in autocracy as state dependence on oil rises. Yet the politics of the country belie this.
On June 24, 2008, the Carnegie Endowment hosted a discussion on EU and U.S free trade agreements (FTAs) in the Middle East with Riad al Khouri, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center. While Europe has historically been active in negotiating FTAs in the Middle East, U.S. FTAs in the region have primarily been motivated by strategic concerns rather than economic impacts.
Free trade agreements between the West (U.S. and EU) and Middle East and North African (MENA) countries, while containing beneficial elements, have strengthened negative perceptions of “western-led globalization” because they benefit unpopular elites and impose serious short term economic adjustment.
France has recently proposed a Mediterranean Union. To ensure this initiative’s effectiveness and avoid the pitfalls of the Euro-Mediterranean process, the EU must seriously review its linked aid and agricultural and immigration policies toward the region.
Since global change accelerated a decade or so ago, mentioning globalisation has tended to upset many people in the Arab world. Was 2007 the year that the region moved closer -- and more comfortably -- to the rest of the globe?
