Market Watch: Trade Wars and Bond-Offs: Side Effects of Tariffs and Tactical Borrowing Hit the Gulf
Market Watch: Payment Delayed: The Economic Risk of Gulf Contracting Practices
by Karen E. Young
Like the Bin Laden Group and Saudi Oger, Carillion has proved that the construction of megaprojects in the Gulf, however lucrative and central to state-led development plans, is full of pitfalls.
The Bridge: Qatar Must Adapt SEZs to New Regional Geopolitical Realities
Market Watch: Qatar Crisis Heightens Obstacles to the Economic Reform Agenda
by Karen E. Young
While there are professed visions of change away from state-led growth, in which new private sector dynamism and the expansion of Gulf equity markets would employ citizens and wean states from oil and gas revenue, the realities of politics on the ground in the last two weeks demonstrate there are more powerful forces at play.
Market Watch: GCC Crisis: Implications
by Karen E. Young
As tensions across the Gulf Arab states escalate, measures taken against Qatar are impacting trade, business, and food security. Here are some implications of the ongoing diplomatic fallout with Qatar.
Market Watch: Isolating Qatar Reveals Economic Vulnerabilities of the GCC
by Karen E. Young
The Saudi, Bahraini, and Emirati efforts to isolate Qatar diplomatically and logistically from its Gulf Cooperation Council partners highlights structural weaknesses in many of the Gulf states, not just Qatar.
Market Watch: As Reform Agenda Waffles, Citizens Take Life to the Streets
by Karen E. Young
Despite slowdowns in consumer demand and general economic activity, there is evidence of alternative economic behavior and microenterprise that is thriving in the Gulf.
Market Watch: Economic Nationalism at the Expense of GCC Integration
As a burgeoning global trend, economic nationalism is also surging in the Gulf states. What may be lost is the decade of efforts in economic integration and negotiations to make the GCC work as a common market, with complementary assets.
Market Watch: Pricing the Trump Risk in Gulf Economies
by Karen E. Young
The beginning of the Trump administration points to, at the least, a heightened period of political and economic risk, which Gulf governments, financial institutions, and businesses will have to price, assess, and manage.
Market Watch: International Trade, Investment, and Finance in the Trump Administration
by Karen E. Young
Trump’s pro-growth agenda will need partners, and the GCC states are also looking for investment partners in their diversification efforts and for placements for state-owned investment vehicles. It will be the politicization of these partnerships that will create the most risk.
Market Watch: Easing Labor Market Restrictions in the Gulf
by Karen E. Young
In the GCC, there is an effort to recalibrate the relationship between foreign workers and Gulf national economies, in both the reliance on foreign labor and the downward pressure it has on service sector salaries.
Market Watch: Transactional Partnerships To Define Foreign and Economic Policy in the Gulf
by Karen E. Young
The new Trump administration will likely offer a more transactional view of U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, and specifically toward the Gulf states.
Market Watch: The Gulf’s Entanglement in Egypt
by Karen E. Young
Egypt gets caught between lenders as GCC countries struggle to meet their aid promises in times of fiscal austerity.