The Iran-Iraq War and its Socio-Economic Effects

Professor Mohammad Farzanegan (Philipps-Universität Marburg)

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Abstract

This talk will be based on Professor Farzanegan's current research on the following two topics: The Opportunity Cost of the Islamic Revolution and War for Iran and Growing up in the Iran-Iraq War and Preferences for Strong Defense .

The first paper aims to answer the question of what Iran’s economy would have looked like in the absence of the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). The second paper explores the question of whether individual experiences of Iranians with the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) during their early adulthood affected their preferences for having strong national defence forces and their willingness to fight for their country.

Biography

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan is a Professor of Economics of the Middle East in the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) and School of Business and Economics at Philipps-Universität Marburg since 2012. He graduated from Allameh Tabatabaei University with a B.A. in Theoretical Economics in 1999, and from the University of Tehran with an M.Sc. in Energy Economics and Marketing in 2002. With the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), he earned his PhD in Economics (Dr.rer.pol) from the Technische Universität Dresden in 2009 with summa cum laude. His doctoral dissertation (“Political Economy of Natural Resources and Governance in Iran: An Empirical Investigation") under the supervision of Professor Marcel Thum won the Dr. Feldbausch best dissertation prize in 2009. Following his PhD project, he received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's Georg Forster Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers for his research project at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW) in Mannheim and at the Technische Universität Dresden.

He specializes in the political economy of developing countries and empirical development economics with reference to the MENA region. He focuses on the natural resource management, corruption and shadow economy, demographic transition and economics of sanctions with particular attention to Iran. He is co-edited a book titled Economic Welfare and Inequality in Iran: Developments since the Revolution with Pooya Alaedini (2016, Palgrave Macmillan). He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals, most recently “Do Sanctions Constrain Military Spending of Iran?,” with S. Dizaji in Defence and Peace Economics (2019), “Oil booms and inequality in Iran,” with T. Krieger in Review of Development Economics (2019); “Cognitive Ability and Corruption: Rule of Law (Still) Matters” in Empirical Economics (2019); “Sanctions and the Shadow Economy: Empirical Evidence from Iranian Provinces” with B. Hayo in Applied Economics Letters (2019); and “How Does the Flow of Remittances Affect the Trade Balance of the Middle East and North Africa?” with S. Hassan in Journal of Economic Policy Reform (2019).

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. Online registration on Google .

Chair: Nima Mina (SOAS)

Organiser: SOAS Middle East Institute and the Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS

Contact email: lmei@soas.ac.uk