Macroeconomics and regulation

This report was originally published on the website of the Middle East Institute ( mei.edu) The following study discusses the role of Lebanon’s gold reserves in the establishment of a currency board and evaluates four policy options: a true currency board, constrained central bank reform, full dollarization, and a unified managed float. Gold reserves are relevant under all four. The conclusion is consistent across them: no monetary framework, however carefully designed and howe ...

We are now in the fifth week since the U.S. airstrike that killed top leaders of the Iranian regime, initiating a war involving the United States and Israel against the country. More than a month of mutual bombardments between Iran and Israel has ensued, extending to other Persian Gulf nations, U.S. military installations—and even Cyprus. From a global perspective, the impact has stemmed primarily from disruptions to regional production of goods and the blockade of the Strait of Hor ...

The U.S.–China technological rivalry has become a central axis of global economic and geopolitical competition. While the United States continues to lead in frontier innovation—most notably in advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI)—China has consolidated strengths in large-scale implementation, manufacturing capacity, and control over critical segments of global supply chains. These advantages are especially visible in clean energy technologies and in the processin ...

The 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting took place in an environment of elevated economic uncertainty and structural risk repricing. According to the Global Risks Report (GRR) 2026, geoeconomic confrontation and economic downturn rank among the most severe near-term risks, while inflation-related risks and economic volatility have risen sharply in perceived severity compared with the previous edition. Notably, 50% of respondents to the Global Risks Perception Survey ...

Le Mali, le Burkina Faso et le Niger, réunis au sein de l’Alliance des États du Sahel (AES), affirment l’ambition de bâtir une souveraineté nationale qui leur permettrait de s’émanciper de la domination et des influences extérieures et de se doter d’une liberté d’action dans les choix de développement politique et économique. Cependant, cette ambition se heurte à de nombreuses contraintes économiques et sécuritaires.La souveraineté ne peut se construire sans une base économique soli ...

This paper revisits Big Push industrialization theory in the context of open economies deeply integrated into global value chains (GVCs). While classical Big Push models emphasize demand complementarities and coordination failures in largely closed economies, many middle-income countries now industrialize through foreign-owned, import-intensive production networks. We develop an extended Big Push framework that incorporates GVC integration and import leakage, and show how these feat ...

Introduction: COP30 as a Test of Reality, Not AmbitionCOP30 in Belém was never going to be a breakthrough. In a world marked by fiscal exhaustion, geopolitical rivalry, and eroding trust in multilateralism, expecting transformational climate cooperation bordered on denial. The choice of the Amazon as host carried symbolic weight, but symbolism does not override power, interests, or institutional capacity.The outcome of COP30 confirms a deeper truth: the global climate regime has ent ...

The post-1945 international order, an architecture born of war-weariness and colonial twilight, is now a majestic but empty shell. Its foundational promise—a universal system of rules administered impartially—has been hollowed out by decades of selective enforcement, instrumentalized law, and a chasm between the rhetorical ideals of its custodians and their geopolitical practice. This is not a temporary dysfunction, but a systemic failure of legitimacy. From the invasion of Iraq und ...

In response to developing countries’ dissatisfaction with the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) of $300 billion, which was decided at the Twenty-Ninth Conference Of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, the COP29 and COP30 presidencies promised to develop a roadmap to achieve $1.3 trillion in external climate finance that developing countries need, and to present it at COP30 in Belém, Brazil[1]. The two pre ...