Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Artunç, Cihan

Titel

Book Reviews: State and Entrepreneurs in Egypt: Economic Development since 1805

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of Economic History, 2019, Vol.79 (1), p.282-283

Ort / Verlag

Santa Clara: Cambridge University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Muhammad Ali’s state industrialization (1805–1848), which stressed the central government’s exclusive involvement; Khedive Ismail’s development program (1863–1879), which relied on massive public projects financed with foreign investment; the British occupation (1882–1922), which undertook fiscal reforms and got involved in irrigation projects but otherwise minimized state involvement; the “Liberal Age” (1923–1952), during which, thanks to the government’s economic reforms, a local entrepreneurial elite coalesced as competitors to Europeans; Nasser’s socialist agenda (1952–1970), which led to broad nationalization of foreign and local private business; Sadat’s regime (1970–1981), whose policies emphasized market liberalization; and Mubarak (1981–2010), who continued the previous pro-business initiatives. To establish any large firm—the scale of enterprise on which the book implicitly focuses on—one had to go through a costly incorporation process that involved getting special permission from the government and add “natives” to the company’s board of directors. Despite the limits of the source material, the book is a useful read for practitioners interested in the different strategies the state pursued and the potential implications of these policies on Egypt’s economic development.