This book is the first cross-country analysis of resource-based industrialization (RBI), a controversial industrialization strategy favored by developing countries in the 1970s. It examines the expectations and the actual experience of RBI in the oil-exporting countries Bahrain, Cameroon, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. Auty shows that these countries underestimated the risks associated with RBI's large capital-intensive projects and that many RBI plants were poorly implemented and became uncompetitive when prices fell below forecast levels. However, Auty argues, given its long gestation period and link to volatile energy markets, RBI does have considerable long-term potential provided conditions of financial restructuring and macro- and micro-economic efficiency are met. Scholars and students in development economics, and advisers and consultants in and to developing-country governments will find this important analysis covers a variety of country sizes and efficiency constraints, offering a broad range of examples of RBI.

An examination of the problems of economic growth and structural change in oil-exploring economies which focuses on the experience of Iran. The author argues that oil income can make a substantial contribution to industrial growth, subject to the adoption of appropriate policy measures.

Were oil supplies everlasting and the demand for oil strong and continuous, economic diversification in the Gulf would be pointless. However oil reserves are finite and non-renewable and the world demand for oil from the Gulf region is simply not stable. Collectively the countries of the Gulf face the striking prospect that unless priorities and plans are set with care the gestation period of their economic development may be longer than the expected life of their hydrocarbon resources. This book examines just that threat. It considers the opportunities available to the Gulf states for accumulating sufficient productive capital in the non-oil sectors of their economy to offset the drawing down of oil reserves. The book pays particular attention to the possibilities of development through cooperation not only within the Gulf Cooperation Council but also within the larger Arab region and the Third World as a whole. It concludes with a critical review of the main challenges that these economies are facing and are likely to face in the near future with special emphasis on their major problems and failures. First published in 1984.

Not unpredictably, there is a complex energy bind as we approach the end of the twentieth century. The oil importing industrial countries have anchored their industries, their means of transportation, their home comfort- in short, their whole energy-dependent lifestyle-largely to hydrocarbon fuels.

Case study of the relationship between socioeconomic conditions, industrial development and industrialization policy in Kuwait - explains the importance of a diversified economic structure and self-sustainable long term economic growth for the post-petroleum era; covers economic and social development, labour demand, technology transfer, pricing of petroleum and petroleum products, income redistribution schemes, economic cooperation with the Gulf States, forecasting model, etc. Statistical tables.

Case studies analysing the impact of petroleum price increase and monetary policies for major OECD countries on economic adjustment in petroleum exporting countries (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Senegal, Peru and Jamaica) - examines commodity Terms of Trade, gross domestic products, current account deficit, external debt, energy consumption, and petroleum product prices; reviews world economic trends, 1970 to 1980, agricultural sector perspectives, and alternative energy source issues in developing countries. Graphs and statistical tables.

Since the discovery of abundant oil resources in the 1920s, Venezuela has had an economically privileged position among the nations of Latin America, which has led to its being treated by economic and political analysts as an exceptional case. In her well-known study of Venezuela’s political economy, The Paradox of Plenty (1997), Stanford political scientist Terry Karl argued that this oil wealth induced extraordinary corruption, rent-seeking, and centralized intervention that resulted in restricting productivity and growth. What this and other studies of Venezuela’s economy fail to explain, however, is how such conditions have accompanied both growth and stagnation at different periods of Venezuela’s history and why countries experiencing similar levels of corruption and rent-seeking produce divergent developmental outcomes. By investigating the record of economic development in Venezuela from 1920 to the present, Jonathan Di John shows that the key to explaining why the economy performed much better between 1920 and 1980 than in the post-1980 period is to understand how political strategies interacted with economic strategies—specifically, how politics determined state capacity at any given time and how the stage of development and development strategies affected the nature of political conflicts. In emphasizing the importance of an approach that looks at the political economy, not just at the economy alone, Di John advances the field methodologically while he contributes to a long-needed history of Venezuela’s economic performance in the twentieth century.

The Community of Oil Exporting Countries (1972) looks at the oil producing countries of the developing world and their economic reliance on oil. This reliance comes with an unwillingness to leave their economic fate to the vagaries of competition, leading to co-operative schemes that protect them from trade receipt fluctuations. This book is a close reading of the situation, and the resulting co-operative efforts.