Ishac Diwan

Ishac Diwan is Professor of economics, at Paris Sciences et Lettres (a consortium of Parisian universities) where he holds the chair of the Economy of the Arab World, and teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure. He has held recent teaching positions at Columbia University, School for International Public Affairs, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Political Economy program of the Economic Research Forum, where he runs two projects on the study of crony capitalism, and the analysis of opinion surveys. Diwan current research interests focus on the political economy of the Middle East, in addition to broader development issues. His recent books include A Political Economy of the Middle East (co-authored with Melani Cammett, Westview Press 2015); and Crony Capitalism in the Middle East (co-edited with Adeel Malik and Izak Atiyas, Oxford University Press, 2019). He is widely published in top journals on issues of global finance, macroeconomic and development strategies, and Middle East political economy (see https://scholar.harvard.edu/idiwan/home). Diwan is a frequent consultant with governments and international organizations, working recently on policy issues in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Egypt. Previously, Diwan was at the World Bank where he worked in the Research Complex, the World Bank Institute, and in Operations. He lived in Addis Abeba (2002-07) and Accra (2007-11), as the World Bank’s Country Director in East and then in West Africa.